Genre Connections

I really like reading memoirs, they are usually interesting and clever and occasionally insightful. I recently realized that memoirs are the reality TV of books. That seems obvious now, allow me to relate how I came to this conclusion.

I was watching TV and I saw an ad for a show called Billy the Exterminator. From what I gathered, it's about an uncouth but extremely daring guy named Billy, who will go after any animal in any part of a house. The ad shows him under porches wrestling with big snakes, in attics battling hoards of bats etc. You can tell he's seen it all, and I sat there thinking, I would never watch this show, but if he wrote a book about his experiences, I would totally read it.

I'm not sure why I would read the book but not watch the show, but then I realized that I recently heard about a book written by a professional dishwasher, Dishwasher Pete. I totally wanted to run out and get this book and learn all about the ins and outs of the dishwashing industry. But what would I gain from this? I won't learn anything particularly useful, probably, at least not for my life, I could read a much more pertinent or at least more educational biography or something. These memoirs are the reality shows of reading, just kind of ridiculous white noise. They feed my curiosity about people.