I came to But Enough About Me with no particular nostalgia for Burt Reynolds. I was twelve when Boogie Nights came out and I knew him primarily as someone my parents' generation got excited about. The book had been on my list for months because a colleague who covers celebrity memoir insisted it was the best self-narrated audiobook she had heard in years, and I finally started it on a Saturday morning that turned into a Saturday afternoon.
She was right about the narration. Reynolds died in 2018, and listening to this now carries a particular weight - a voice that belonged to a very specific era of American celebrity, telling its own story in its own rhythm, which no hired narrator could have approximated.
The memoir is structured not as a straightforward chronology but as a series of portraits - Reynolds moving through the people who shaped him, the people he shaped, and the people who simply intersected with his life in memorable ways. Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood, Dinah Shore, Sally Field, Loni Anderson: the names arrive in clusters, and what saves this from being pure celebrity gossip is Reynolds's evident love for the craft of filmmaking and his honest accounting of his own failures alongside the triumphs.
The early sections, covering his football career at Florida State and the car accident that ended it, are the most quietly affecting. Reynolds never quite got over not playing professionally, and you can hear that in the way he tells it - not with self-pity but with a wistfulness that grounds everything that follows. The pivot to acting was not a Plan B he embraced; it was something that happened to him and that he eventually came to love.
Why It Works in Audio
Reynolds was a raconteur, and that quality is inseparable from the material. The Cosmopolitan centerfold story, the years when he was number one at the box office, the financial decisions that took him from rich to poor and back - these read as showbiz history in print, but in his voice they become lived experience. He pauses in the right places. He laughs at himself. He gets slightly quieter when the topics turn to regret. A professional narrator reading a transcript of this would produce a competent audiobook. Reynolds narrating his own life produces something closer to sitting in a room with him.
At eleven hours and twenty-seven minutes, the book is generous with its run time, and not all sections pull equal weight. The football chapters may lose listeners who have no frame of reference for the sport, as at least one reviewer has noted. And Reynolds's tendency to people his story with an enormous cast of names can feel like a lot to track without the visual anchor of photographs.
Before You Commit to But Enough About Me
Reynolds promised to call out the assholes and to admit when he was the asshole himself, and he delivers on both. The sections covering his relationship with Loni Anderson and its public deterioration are handled with more complexity than the tabloid version allowed for at the time. He is less self-serving than many memoir subjects in this territory, which makes the book feel more trustworthy overall. The reflections on fatherhood and his relationship with his son Quinton carry genuine feeling and are among the most honest passages in the book.
What you will not find is the kind of sustained introspective reckoning that characterizes the best literary memoir. This is a showman's autobiography - warm, entertaining, generous with gossip and occasionally evasive about the inner life. That is not a flaw so much as an accurate description of the register Reynolds chose.
Who Will Get the Most From It
Essential for anyone with genuine nostalgia for the 1970s and 1980s Hollywood era, or for listeners fascinated by the particular ecosystem of film and television celebrity that Reynolds straddled so effectively. Ideal for long drives - the episodic structure means you can pick it up after an interruption without losing the thread. Those looking for a serious literary memoir or a deeply psychological portrait should look elsewhere.
At a Glance
- Read by: Self-narrated by Burt Reynolds, which makes all the difference - his timing, warmth, and obvious pleasure in the storytelling elevate anecdotes that would read as name-dropping on the page.
- At its heart: Hollywood golden age, fame and financial ruin, legacy and fatherhood
- Vibe: Rollicking, sentimental, occasionally melancholy
- Short version: An uneven but genuinely entertaining memoir that earns its candor - best when Reynolds stops performing and just talks.
Common Questions
Is the football content in the early chapters a significant portion of the book?
It covers Reynolds's youth and is not the dominant focus, but it is present in enough depth that listeners with no interest in football may find those chapters slower going.
Does self-narration work for a memoir this long - over eleven hours?
Yes, in this case. Reynolds's timing and warmth sustain the material throughout, and his performance is consistent. The length is justified by the breadth of the story he is telling.
