I’ve been really getting memoirs lately and thought I’d reach out to find out if people had any recommendations. Some I’ve really enjoyed recently are Wave, Spare, I’m Glad My Mom Died, Escape From Camp 14, Educated, A Stolen Life, and I just recently started A Mother’s Reckoning.
by lavendermagic77
35 Comments
The Glass Castle
Kitchen Confidential
Anything by Annie Ernaux (The Happening; Simple Passion; A Frozen Woman; A Woman’s Story; A Man’s Place)
I really liked both Educated and Spare. I’ll have to check out a few of the others. Thanks!
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim
There Was a Little Girl by Brooke Shields
Open Book by Jessica Simpson
Apparently There Were Complaints by Sharon Gless
Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton
Normal Family by Chrysta Bilton
Whistleblower by Susan Fowler
Me and My Shadows by Lorna Luft
North of Normal for a strange/traumatic childhood memoir!
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach is definitely my favorite.
Most celebrity memoirs are decent. I especially enjoyed Sarah Silverman, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff and Tweak by Nic Sheff are great to read back to back as you get two perspectives on the same story. I think Beautiful Boy is better and I’d read that one first.
Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow
A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy by Sue Klebold
Seconding Kitchen Confidential! Also..
Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
When breath becomes air – Paul Kalanithi
This is going to hurt – Adam Kay
Crying in H-mart – Michelle Zauner
First they killed my father – Loung Ung
A face for picasso by Ariel Henley
Paula-Isabel Allende
Every tool’s a hammer by Adam Savage
XOXY by Kimberly Zeiselman
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
A Place Called Home by David Ambroz and In The Dreamhouse by Carman Machado
I posted a similar question a couple days ago and got hundreds of good suggestions if you want to check it out!!
My favorite is the Sound of Gravel
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Know My Name by Chanel Miller was amazing, albeit hard to read sometimes. She is a master of storytelling. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is another excellent one if you were a fan of Educated.
Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda, Demi Moore, Jessica Simpson, and Padma Lakshmi‘a memoir .
Elizabeth Wurtzel-Prozac Nation, and More, Now, Again.
Mary Karr-Lit
All of Augusten Burroughs
Crying in HMart
The Glass Castle
Crying in the Bathroom by Erika M Sanchez
Paris: the Memoir by Paris Hilton (this one really surprised me with how much I enjoyed it)
Change Me Into Zeus’ Daughter
The World’s Strongest Librarian
The Boy Kings of Texas
Solito by Javier Zamora
Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour. This is probably one of the most underrated memoirs/biographies of all times.
Princess Diarist or Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
Hello Molly! By Molly Shannon
Calypso by David Sedaris (less a memoir and more a collection of personal essays but I love it)
L. Ron Hubbard’s, “A memoir of myself, to myself, for myself.”
I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death by Maggie O’Farrell
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doughty
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
My all time favourite memoir is Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher.
I liked both the autobiographies by Mathew Perry and Tom Felton
*Autobiography of a Face* by Lucy Grealy!
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
Educated Tara Westover
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Pageboy by Elliot Page
All drastically different but equally interesting. I would recommend Greenlights on audio, because Matthew McConaughey is the narrator, which is incredible.
Lab Girl – Hope Jahren
running with scissors
Angela’s ashes
rabbit: the autobiography of ma. Pat
Holding the Man- Timothy Conigrave “It tells of his 15-year love affair with John Caleo, which started when they met in the mid-1970s at Xavier College, an all-boys Jesuit Catholic school in Melbourne, and follows their relationship through the 90s when they both developed AIDS.”
Just Kids by Patti Smith ” In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies.”
The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Warnier “The true story of one girl’s coming-of-age in a polygamist family. Ruth Wariner was the thirty-ninth of her father’s forty-two children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community.”
The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by
Liza Rodman “Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter—the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked—took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his “secret garden” in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind, understanding, and safe adults in her life.
But there was one thing she didn’t know; their babysitter was a serial killer.”
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
1. I love Jenny Lawson! I recommend [Furiously Happy](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848559) to everyone.
2. [Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4136) is part of my Christmas tradition.
3. [On Writing by Stephen King](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10569) is one that I would say is a must-read – both for writers and those who just love literature in general.
4. [Little Weirds by Jenny Slate](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44284906) is just charming. A refreshing palette cleanser of a book.
5. [Failure is an Option by H. Jon Benjamin](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36036560) is absolutely hilarious. It’s as if Bob (from Bob’s Burgers) wrote a book.
*[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know_Why_the_Caged_Bird_Sings?wprov=sfla1)* by Maya Angelou
know my name by chanel miller was definitely difficult to read (please look up trigger warnings before you read) but very incredible and thought-provoking
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb (maybe not totally memoir)
Idiot by Laura Clery
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
The Glass Castle