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Title:        Porcelain: A Memoir
Series:     ——
Author:   Moby
Rating:    3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre:     Autobiography
Pages:     408
Format:  Digital Edition

Moby, the music artist, looks back on his life from his late teens until the release of his album, Play, in 1999.

I’ve enjoyed various songs by Moby, as I like the kind of music he puts out. I’m not his greatest fan, nor do I know all his albums or all his songs or anything like that. I’m a casual fan. At best. I knew that one of his songs was the end song for the movie Bourne Identity. I knew that he was a vegetarian [turns out he’s vegan] and I knew that he had, at some point, claimed to be a Christian.

Non-fiction is not the genre [notice how I lump it ALL together? That should tell you something] that I like to take long swims in. I prefer to let others have that privilege. But my recent read of Deadhouse Gates really left me needing something very different to get me back in the reading groove. This popped up at the library, I believe, so that is how I ended up reading it.

How do I review a book that is pretty much a journal? There is no plot. Moby goes all over the place even while keeping things very chronological. We might get introduced to Karen in one chapter and then he’s with Josephine in the next with no rhyme or reason. This was not an indepth, exhaustive look at Moby’s life. It touched on highlights that have apparently stood out to him up until 1999, when things started going his way?

3 things stood out to me. He had a very hard life growing up and overcame being the token poor boy where he lived. Relationally, he needs to grow up and make a commitment to one of the ladies and stop searching for “The One”. Love isn’t just a feeling and he chases the feelings, time after time after time. Finally, while he might call himself a Christian, I’d be forced to say he’s “spiritual”. He’s interested in “God” but it is apparent that while he’s read and even studied the Bible, he doesn’t think that the God of the Bible is the God he’s after. It is sad to see and he even acknowledges his gradual loss of Faith, but he never claims to have had Faith in Jesus Christ. So from my perspective, what has he really lost? A feeling.

This is definitely geared more towards those who are musicians themselves. When he starts talking about “the beatback interwoven with the attack high on his RGB-304” I have no phracking clue what he’s talking about, specifically. I can glean that he’s doing something musical with one of his instruments. In all honesty, that is enough, but it would have been nice to understand a little more sometimes. I felt like the dumb kid peeking through the window occasionally.

With all of that being said, I still enjoyed this read. I learned more about a guy whose music I like. I jumped the rut of SFF for a day and I learned that I am pretty damned satisfied with my life even if I’m not famous, making 100K a year or sleeping with pornstars. If Moby, whose real name is Richard Melville Hall, writes another memoir about later in his life, I’ll be reading it for sure.

★★★☆ ½