Thursday, July 7, 2022

Book Review - Rough Draft: A Memoir; Katy Tur

 

Simon & Schuster Audio - 2022

This memoir by MSNBC news anchor Katy Tur is deeply personal and quite revealing. She writes about her childhood in CA, her parents, her career, relationships and motherhood.  The story begins with her childhood as the oldest child (she has a younger brother who is a doctor) of Bob and Marika Tur.  Katy's parents were hard working helicopter photographers for the LA News Service capturing some of the most well-known new scenes of memory like the OJ car chase, Madonna and Sean Penn's secret wedding, the LA riots and Reginald Denny beating and other prominent news stories.  They were always packed and ready to go when news was in the making.  Even though there were a lot of good times, life at home was often unpredictable, her father was often violent and experienced explosive episodes and the couple eventually divorced.  Her father struggled with his sexuality and eventually transitioned - Bob Tur is now Zoey Tur.  Katy's relationship with her father is still strained at this time.

I enjoyed learning about Katy's initial interest in a career in law and how journalism eventually just seemed like the career she was meant for.  He life as a foreign correspondent was quite interesting as well.  She speaks with honesty about her past relationships, her desire to be a mother and how she came up with the title "Rough Draft" -- still processing the direction of her career and personal life as she goes along. At just 38 years old, she is an award winning journalist, NY Times best selling author and now has written two books: Unbelievable  covering the crazy 2016 presidential election. as well as this newly released memoir. The audio book is read by the author which was great and made it all the more personal.

Rating - 4/5 stars

(Note: the audiobook download was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for my unbiased review)

7 comments:

  1. I may add this to my list, sounds quite different than what I usually read.

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    1. It is a very different kind of memoir - I liked it so brutally honest.

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  2. I tend to enjoy memoirs more when they are narrated by the author. Both of Tur's books sound interesting!

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  3. Yes, I never read Unbelievable - just the thought of reading anything else that references T sickens me.

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  4. We never heard of her but I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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  5. I’m not familiar with her, but it sounds like she’s had a fascinating life & career. I’d be interested to hear about her parents too, covering all those news events.

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  6. I think the life of a foreign correspondent sounds so interesting and if she has good stories to tell, even better.

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