I've been listening to Werner Herzog's memoirs 'Every man for himself and god against all'. I don't know what the general consensus is about Herzog, but all I knew of him before I started the memoirs was the incredibly angsty nihilistic clips of him talking about the jungle. I liked the way he spoke because it was iconic in some fashion. I found out his memoirs were narrated by himself straight away and was hooked first by his voice, then by his stories.
I was surprised to find none of the angsty nihilism in his memoirs! The way he told his stories was very down to earth. I thought the phrases were even too small in proportion to what he was really talking about. I thought he was just a filmmaker, but quite consistently, he recounts something shocking, made even more so by the down-to-earthness. 6 foot arrows killing his film extras. Child soldiers. Barefoot in the mountains. Duping PRC policemen. His voice recounts things so matter of factly, almost as if these things were normal.
Even his romanticism - dropping all belongings and travelling to a foreign land for one true love, hitchhiking across the world dependent on kindness of strangers and the likes - felt other worldly.
Anyways, if you don't know anything else about this man, I totally recommend listening (key!) to his memoirs. It's like having a pariah german uncle tell you stories after bedtime when you're supposed to sleep but don't want to.
