What If They Lived? by Phil Hall and Rory Leighton Aronsky

I bought a copy of a book called What If They Lived? co-authored by Phil Hall and Rory Leighton Aronsky. Rory's blog is Scraps of Literacy, by the way... it's a book by film buffs for film buffs, and it is both informative and speculative entertainment. It covers a wide range of film stars from the entire history of film through today, who died "before their time," and asks the question in the title: What if they lived? Each actor/actress is given a brief background run-down, as well as their film experience, and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. It then moves into speculating on the courses their careers may have taken, based on their popularity at the time of their deaths (on the upswing or tailing off), and the projects they had lined up at the time of their departure, and some good ol' fashioned educated guessing.

I had some problems with the Kindle version of the book that I bought. This is the type of book that seems to encourage flipping around, rather than powering through cover to cover, like a novel. However, the digital version didn't have a working Table of Contents, so I couldn't see at a glance a complete list of the actors featured, and jump to them accordingly. I had to either scroll through the pages manually, or move the slider bar around. I did ultimately flip through the whole book, reading most of the entries, but it would have been easier to navigate the book with a working TOC.

Also, my anal nature was repeatedLY grated by the numerous formatting errors, and typos. I kept wanting to go in and fix things! The content was very interesting, and perhaps most people wouldn't worry about it, but for me, it was a roadblock (albeit, certainly not a deal-breaker).

The final problem I had was the intro, which got under my skin - you know how I am with sometimes being derailed at the very beginning of a book! It was written by a chap named Mike Watt, and he goes on at length about how devastated he was at the passing of Jim Henson, whom he'd never met, but was a big fan of. He apparently went through all the stages of grief, like when you lose a loved one, even though he was in junior high at the time. Now, far be it from me to come across as making light of someone's pain, but that is so far out of my reality that I just couldn't connect at all. I certainly know what it's like to lose a close loved one - my brother's death ripped my heart out. But I cannot even begin to imagine any celebrity anywhere, at any time of my life, who's death did anything other than briefly pique my curiosity when I heard of it. Devastated? Yeah, not even close. I must be a stone-hearted individual.

Barring the sappy intro and the formatting issues, the book was very interesting. A lot of the featured actors from early in Hollywood history I'd never even heard of, so it was nice to get a little history lesson. And some of the more recent entries were thorough and well-written (Bruce Lee, John Belushi, Heath Ledger, etc.).

Summary: 3.5/5 Anyone with even a passing interest in film history or movies in general would enjoy perusing this book -- though I'd recommend the hard-copy over the digital version, until the kinks are worked out.