It has been years since I’ve read any biographies or autobiographies, but on the same trip to London recently I read iCon Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business in one direction and Chronicles, vol 1 by Bob Dylan in the other direction.

These books couldn’t be more different: iCon was a normal for this genre – he goes through the significant events in Steve Jobs career in more or less linear order. There’s a chapter for each significant period of his life and so on.

Chronicles, on the other hand, is a good book but very different. It’s more or less like some rambling poetry telling a long story. It’s an autobiography in the sense that Bob Dylan is the author and it’s about this life, but it’s very unusual how he describes things and what he chooses to talk about.

The most interesting part for me was when he described his early years in NYC, trying to break into the folk music business, and how he read all kinds of books and poetry in his spare time.

One fun thing I caught was he seems to give the key to his music:

As for me, what I did to break away was to take simple folk changes and put new imagery and attitude to them, use catchphrases and metaphor combined with a new set of ordinances that evolved into something different that had not been heard before.

Let’s see, I also learned a new word: obstreperous, which he used to describe David Crosby of The Byrds (it means noisily and stubbornly defiant; unruly).