Biographies - do you or don't you?!

I've just got back from Book Group, where we discussed Dear Fatty by Dawn French. Not much to say about this autobiography - general consensus was that we expected it to be funny, and it wasn't much. Interesting in places, but mostly very guarded - and we were left wondering why she'd written it, since she seemed to hate revealing details about her life. But passed the time well enough...

But the reason I mention it is that the discussion acted as a springboard for today's post - since I seemed to be the only person there who read biographies and autobiographies. For some people, this was the first biography they'd ever read - and I was rather surprised. I don't read many, and the ones I do read tend to be by or about novelists, but I thought that every reader would pick up one now and then. It just seems logical, to me, if I've enjoyed an author's books - to go and read a bit about their life. Not to judge their fiction-writing based on their life, but just out of interest. And if it's not biographies, I always have some diaries or letters on the go (mostly because they're broken up in good bathroom-size sections...)

I thought this was the norm for people who read quite a lot of books - but was I wrong? Or perhaps I'm fooling myself - when I look at my reading in 2009, I see that I only read twelve books in the biography/autobiography/letters/memoirs category. But that's still a good 7 or 8% of my reads last year. And, having taken over a new bookcase on the landing at home with biographies etc., I know that I certainly own quite a few. It's a genre that's more or less impossible to recommend, because only the very best are of interest unless you're interested in the person already. Biographies/autobiographies worth reading regardless of your initial interest in the person include, in my opinion, Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, The Great Western Beach by Emma Smith, anything by Claire Tomalin, It's Too Late Now by AA Milne, The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne. I'm sure there are others. (Links to posts on all of these can be found here).

Tell me I'm not alone in reading these sorts of books! What are you habits with biographies, and why? Let me know...