Dolly Parton's New Memoir

Is there anyone better than Dolly Parton? The answer is no. Her new book, “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics” (Chronicle Books, out Nov. 17)

“I have often said that songs are my children and that I expect them to support me when I’m old,” she writes. “Well, I am old, and they are!”

The kids at school made fun of her. “I was trying to tell them in my own way, ‘It ain’t about golden riches. You can be rich in love. In all sorts of wonderful things, you can be rich.’ ”

“I never shied away from any topic, whether it was suicide or prostitution or women’s rights or whatever,” she writes. “I was always like that and still am. Whatever it is, I can say it in a song, in my own way.”

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