So many lurid and appalling books have been written about Burton and Taylor that it’s hard to see them plain. “The Richard Burton Diaries” is, however, true to why tabloid writers flocked to them: It’s a love story so robust you can nearly warm your hands on its flames.
Taylor is in her late 30s in most of these entries; he is in his mid-40s. “E is my only ism,” Burton writes. “Elizabethism.” While she was away, he noted, “I miss her like food.” He calls Taylor “an eternal one-night stand” and “beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography.” He declares, “She is a prospectus that can never be entirely cataloged, an almanac for Poor Richard.”--
Dwight Garner at The New York TimesAt first I was excited about this new book, but looking through the excerpts at Amazon, I am reminded that if you have any literay ambitions for your journal, you really do have to put in a little time and oomph into it and give the reader a little something to ride on. On the other hand, if you are famous like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, you will still find readers eager to turn the pages, and although I was never a fan of these two, I am not entirely cold on the prospect of reading these diaries, but it is on my 'pile' list and I am not sure that I will ever get around to it. You see, this is why I would not mind an extra couple of hundred years of life, because I would like to read it someday, if I had time enough and there were not so many other goodies to read.