Among the various source quotes on the back cover of Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles is one by David Letterman sidekick and bandleader Paul Shaffer. Lauding the book as a dream come true for Fab music scholars, he reminds readers that its author (in the recording studio at least) was that rarest of things” a true Beatles insider. “The cat was there!” Paul exclaims.

Indeed, the “cat” in question, recording engineer Geoff Emerick, was that and much more. A fixture behind the recording console for a large part of The Beatles’s career, Emerick did much to shape the ground-breaking sounds of The Beatles’s post-touring studio years (1966-1970). Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heats Club Band and Abbey Road all benefited from the sonic innovations of the young man known as “Mr. Golden Ears” by his EMI colleagues (though reading the book one can suspect the nickname was served up with generous helpings of English taking the you-know-what).

Between third class train rides and afternoons at the racetrack, Ernest Hemingway filed “Living on $1,000 a Year in Paris” with an editor at the Toronto Daily Star in 1922. After a stint of reporting and foreign correspondent work at the Kansas City Star—where he was inevitably “forced to write a simple declarative sentence,” he later explained— the young writer was offered a job at the Canadian paper in 1920. Hemingway then took on a correspondent role at their Paris office and moved to France after marrying Elizabeth “Hadley” Richardson.

In less than 600 words, Hemingway tallies in “Living on $1,000 a Year in Paris” the considerable lengths to which he and his wife could go with the Canadian or American dollar in France’s capital city at the time. It’s due to “prices not having advanced in proportion to” the dollar’s “increased value.” Meals are compared to the “best restaurants in America” in his piece, and the lodging is “comfortable.” These are indeed the spare declarative sentiments of a dry newspaper report, and it’s a bit short for what appears to be a meaty collection of nonfiction at Byliner.com, where “Living on $1,000…” was submitted for perusal in early July of this year. Part social network, part digital publisher, Byliner launched in June. It connects readers to writers, but also to other readers, who are free to browse the hub’s digital archives for worthwhile narratives as well as submit links to stories not already collected at the site.

Every now and again I get sucked into participating in one of those blogger memes where you have to pick out your favourite book. The thing is, I maintain a LiveJournal, and frankly get just a little bored with trying to ensure my picks show me off as deep and sensitive to a community that includes feminist rants about Firefly.

Thus, charter member of the Junior Iconoclasts that I am, I recently decided to get cute and pluck out something like the most obscure or weirdest book I own.

The ongoing liquidation of Borders bookstores has offered ample opportunity to discover exciting authors and titles previously unknown. However, one such sale led to the rediscovery of a very well known name. When I stepped into the Borders slated to close on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue back in November, vulturous bargain-grabbing readers had already scavenged the vast majority of the desirable stock; 95 percent of the fiction titles had vanished, and what remained was likely stripped of their covers and hauled away to the recycling bin.

In the basement, however, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section remained plentiful. Even with 75 percent off, those covers with turrets and space ships are impossible to move. Merged with these unpopular remnants was also the vampire subgenre from the young adult section, all awash in that flavorless nouveau-Gothic aesthetic made attractive by the Twilight series. Absently browsing, I happened across one such YA paperback, but carrying an author’s name which gave me pause: S.E. Hinton.

Amongst the praise for King of the World came a perceptive comment from Toni Morrison. “By using the Clay-Liston battle as a pivot and placing Muhammad Ali in an accurate social context, Remnick constructs a narrative very much like Ali himself: astute, double-hearted, irresistible. He is so completely in charge of his craft that it becomes an art.”

Biographies are often shunned by criticism, regarded as a resort of easy virtue. There is undoubtedly craft to presenting one’s life in writing: accurate articulation of events and characters in the subjects’ life; understanding the subjects’ standing and importance in their profession. But it is rare for biographical writing to be considered ‘art’. So how does King of the World differ?