I’ve always enjoyed Tom Selleck as an actor, Magnum is one of my all-time favourite shows, and I’ve enjoyed his turns as Jesse Stone, loved him Three Men and a Baby, delighted in his appearance on Friends, and have a soft spot for High Road to China, and Runaway. I’ve yet to start Blue Bloods, but it is on my radar.

As such, I was rather looking forward to digging into Selleck’s new memoir, You Never Know. I’ve enjoyed a lit of memoirs recently, Patrick Stewart’s, Henry Winkler’s, the audio book of Ron and Clint Howard’s memoir, read by the authors, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed this one more if I’d listened to it, and could hear Selleck’s inflections on the words.

Because on its own, I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t resonate with me other personal stories had. I get it, Selleck is very private about his personal life, and I respect that. I admire the hell out of it, and I was super-eager to read all about his work on Magnum, which almost encompasses the second half of the book.

But it didn’t speak to me like I wanted it to. And maybe that’s my fault for prokecting what I wanted from it versus what he gave me.

To be fair, Selleck seems like a complete professional, polite, always shows up, knows his lines and works to make people comfortable on his set – something to be applauded and emulated but his storytelling of these events and of his early days in the Reserves, or some of the jobs he took to get by, and the people he met as a consequence isn’t as engaging from a storytelling point of view.

The man is an icon and a legend, and I have no doubt that should I meet him someday, I would delight in telling him what his role as Thomas Sullivan Magnum meant to me, but when the book was all over did I know anymore about Selleck than I did before hand?

Not really.

And I wasn’t looking for dirt or anything like that. You just want to recognize part of yourself in those you look up to, so that you have something to strive for, and Selleck’s book is like a blanc tableau, you only see what he shows you (and again I’m totally for keeping his personal life separate), but give us an insight into your craft, talk about your favourite episodes (apparently he has a list), share quirky and funny stories.

I didn’t get that from this one, and like I said that may very well be on me. I’ve always loved Selleck’s work, will continue to love his work, and do hope to tell him what he’s and Magnum have meant to me over the years.

So, hey, can you please read it and tell me what you think? Maybe it was just me.