An annoyance for me, not bad enough to put in the Pit; but still, annoying. The in my view, book-title abuse, nowadays by certain non-fiction authors, of the word “biography”.
Per what I’ve been taught, a biography is the recounting of the life of a particular human person (or maybe, several persons). If it’s one person telling the story of their life so far, it’s an autobiography.
Some pretentious authors seem to have taken it upon theirselves, to expand the use of this noun. Examples are Peter Ackroyd, with his London; The Biography, and Simon Sebag-Montefiore, with Jerusalem; The Biography. First – in the general understanding, biographies are about individual people. Where do you get off, decreeing for the first time, that biographies can be about, in this case, cities? And – with these authors – they haven’t even the modesty to put it as “a biography” – no, it’s “The Biography” – implying to my mind anyway, that any feeble twat who subsequently tries to write a book about the history of the city concerned, is clueless and worthless. Arrogant, or what? Be damned if I’ll ever open Mr. A., or Mr. S-M.'s tomes.
This seen also, with Mark Kurlansky’s book Cod; A biography of the fish that changed the world. At least the author has had the decency to call it “A”, not “The”; still, I feel, annoying “look at me, how clever and innovative I am”, grandstanding. I want to say to these authors, “why be such cheap show-offs; why not just let the quality of what you write, speak for itself?”