And I remembered her as the whiney replacement for Norma Jean

Dolly:
My Life and Other Unfinished Business
by Dolly Parton -- of course!

Her stories of the early years back in the hills of East Tennessee make this book worth the reading.  All the rest is good, too, but that first part is hilarious.  Haint tales...store-boughten shoes measured with a stick...digging to China...

1. We picked a spot up on the mountain.  You'd think if we were going to dig all the way to China we would at least have given ourselves the advantage of starting in the lowest holler we could find.  Kids gullible enough to try to dig to China in the first place are not likely to think of that.

About halfway through, I feared it was degenerating into the typical my life narrative--the "I did this. I met so-and-so.  So-and-so was a great friend.  My other best friends of the time were such-and-such."  Blah, blah, blah."  And it did--but only for the briefest of short paragraphs.  Then we were back into her thoughts and experiences with detail and feeling.

Two final points.  I wish it hadn't stopped so soon.  And, I wish all autobiographies were this good.