My House of Memories: For the Record

In My House of Memories: For the Record, the sequel to his 1982 autobiography, ''Sing Me Back Home,'' country legend Merle Haggard says he always cared more about music than being a celebrity. Yet the music is seldom referenced in this sometimes distasteful account of his life as a San Quentin inmate-turned-star whose restlessness drove him to promiscuity, substance abuse, gambling, and bankruptcy. Cowriter Carter, who earlier collaborated on books with George Jones and Reba McEntire, lets the story ramble into an irritatingly loose discourse, and finds no memory too extraneous or crude to include. Top it off with too many errors -- just when did Elvis play Ireland? -- and the end product never approaches the quiet elegance of even one of Haggard's elegiac songs.