Memoirs

Hey all.
I'm a huge literary geek, with a serious penchant for memoirs. I just finished another one, and am on the hunt for something else to sink my teeth into. I tend to lean towards memoirs of individuals with some sort of psychological/physical/emotional baggage...Which pretty much means you can find me in the "addiction", "recovery", "sexuality", and "psychology" sections of your local B&N. Suggestions please, fellow librarythings!
And if you're on the hunt, here's a small sampling of some of my favorite memiors:
Wasted: A memoir of anorexia and bulimia
A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive
Running with Scissors
Look me in the Eye
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Prozac Nation

I have just discovered this genre, although i need to space them out due to the immense amounts of whining prozac nation. Although it wasn't my favourite you could try My Lobotomy by Howard Dully. Someone who got serious brain surgery for no apparent reason and against his will...you might like it.

#1 I also love memoirs and have read most of the ones on your list. Dry by Augusten Burrous is a good one, as are all things David Sedaris, though the new one, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, wasn't as good as the previous...Naked is my favorite.

For something lighter but still in the memoir genre, I recommend anything Bill Bryson, and Elizabeth Emerson Hancock wrote a great one called Trespassers Will be Baptized earlier this year.

I've written reviews of many nonfiction/memoirs on my blog in Readerville .

Enjoy!

I rarely read memoirs, but I just read, loved and highly recommend Things The Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett.

Just a couple:
A Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
This one's controversial but it's one you'll never forget:
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

I've heard wonderful things about The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - high on my TBR list

#6: I LOVED The Glass Castle, though it is very hard to read at times. My review is here . I was waking up from a nap when I posted earlier and felt like I was trying to remember this one but couldn't bring it all the way up. Fantastic!

6, 7

The Glass Castle is phenomenal. Another that reminds me of it, although on a slightly different topic, is Sickened: the memoir of a Munchausen by proxy childhood by Julie Gregory although, according to my sister-in-law, there is evidently some controversy around that one.

I love to read and find myself going back to reading mysteries from Carol Higgins Clark. I'm reading "Hitched" right now. I can't seem to get enough!! I do love to read her mother's work also (Mary Higgins Clark). I also enjoy reading Nora Roberts "The MacGregors" it's a series and is very interesting and full of romance. The first in that series that got me hooked just happened to be on a cruise ship and my husband and I love to go "crusing!"

#s 6,7,8 -- I also loved The Glass Castle.

My favorite memoir I've read recently is Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Other good memoirs from the past couple of years have been Bad Blood by Lorna Sage, The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer, West With the Night by Beryl Markham (a "memoir," but there's some controversy about whether or not Markham actually wrote it), When All the World Was Young by Barbara Holland, and The Road to Nab End by William Woodruff.

Here are some of my favorite memoirs:

The Glass Castle
Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back
Three Little Words: A Memoir
House Rules: A Memoir
Madness: A Bipolar Life
Julie and Julia: 365 Days of Recipes
Straight Up and Dirty
What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love

I keep thinking of more of these! Two that I read recently that both deal with love and the loss of a spouse are Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which is simply phenomenal, and Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape, which I thought was wonderful. I reviewed that one in Readerville .

I have to add The Orchard by Adele Crockett Robertson. Also Drinking the Rain by Alix Kates Shulman.

I am almost done reading a compelling memoir "Truth and Beauty", the story of her long friendship with a talented writer who is a cancer survivor and facially disfigured. Great writing.
Her friend's memoir Autobiography of a face was critically acclaimed; I haven't read it, and may some day.
My TBR stacks are daunting.
Terra
co-author of Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts

My best book so far this year was Pat Conroy's autobiography of his college years My Losing Season. Lots of physical and emotional abuse, just the kind of baggage you may be looking for, voidofdiscretion. I loved it and I didn't know the first thing about basketball, nasty fathers or military schools.

Here are the ones I've read recently. I enjoyed all of these. The ones I didn't enjoy or were mentioned above I didn't include:

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody
Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup*
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel*
Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
Name All the Animals by Alison Smith*
The Liars Club* and Cherry* by Mary Karr

* = Highly Recommended

I own a bunch more that I haven't read. You're welcome to look at those in my library. All tagged memoir.

Edited to fix a ridiculous run-on sentence.

I also read and enjoyed The Liars Club and the loved The Glass Castle. I didn't see Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller mentioned here yet - it's a wonderful story of growing up in Africa.

I just finished Persepolis: Story of a Childhood, a graphic novel (memoir) which is excellent - the author grew up Tehran during the Iran/Iraq war. There's at least one followup book I'll be reading soon. highly recommend.

If you want to venture beyond addiction/recovery/etc. kinds of memoirs, I can highly recommend Two Lives by Vikram Seth, a memoir about his great-uncle and -aunt and the tumultuous times they lived through, and Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray, about her unusual and difficult parents. Also Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox.

I would recommend:

A Beautiful Boy-David Sheff this story is told by the addicts's Father. Offering an inside look as to what the loved ones of addicts endure.

The Glass Castle

Come Back-another story about a child addict.

Food and Loathing by Betsy Lerner is a personal favorite.

First They Killed My Father is not about addiction, but very dark if that's what you are looking for. It follows a family through the Cambodian war camps.

16: I also really enjoyed Name All the Animals and will second that emotion on recommending it.

I finished ER's Dali & I: The Surreal Story by Stan Lauryssens. My review if you're interested:

http://www.librarything.com/work/5336958/book/34462117

Can't say I'ld recommend it, but...

Two weeks ago I finished Ulysses S. Grant's Personal Memoirs from 1885 and absolutely loved it. Grant died a week after finishing the final draft, but it became an enormous bestseller for its time, with 400,000-plus copies sold the first year, and has never gone out-of-print, and I can easily understand why.

I also enjoy the same type of books you listed. I would also highly recommend The Glass Castle. Like, A Child Called It almost unbelievable. It will grab you from the first sentence.

I think the recent books about FLDS Morman sects ruled by Warren Jeffs would fit the bill.
Escape by Carolyn Jessop and Stolen Innocence by Elissa Walls. Both very interesting-- abuse, marriage forced on girls too young, families split up in the name of religion.

If those interest you, you might also try Shattered Dreams by Irene Spencer Her marriage in the 1960's gives you a feel for how it was sharing your husband with 10 other wives and moving around to avoid being found out. Several times, she and her numerous children were forced to start over.

I also enjoyed The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan--a large family, with alcoholic father, and mother who seemed always to be able to win something at the right time to keep the family afloat financially.

I am currently reading The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner. The movie barely scratched the surface of this book. The real Chris Gardner had a much deeper life than the movie showed. He had a strange childhood and had substance abuse issues as an adult. I like it so far.

I love memoirs! Last night I just finished reading He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, which is a wonderful book about trying to find a husband and seeking spiritual satisfaction at the same time. Very well written. I haven't reviewed it yet (I just finished it!) but I have reviewed some other memoirs at http://www.lettersonpages.com.

My favorite so far has been Trespassers Will Be Baptized by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock.

dara85: of the titles you listed, I think Shattered Dreams has, by far, the best writing and most compelling storyline. I felt like Escape was poorly written, and it bugged me how the story jumped around without rhyme or reason. I only made it through 50 pages of Stolen Innocence before I used the Pearl-rule to get rid of it.

lettersonpages: I also really enjoyed Trespassers Will Be Baptized and am stoked because Ms. Hancock will be doing a signing at my store next month. Woo!

It was awful to read, but I second The Glass Castle recommendations.

Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison is another rough read but T. J. Parsell makes the harrowing ride worth taking.

Lost and Found: A Daughter's Tale of Violence and Redemption by Babette Hughes was a favorite of mine, too.

How about Just Checking by Emily Colas—a memoir by an obsessive-compulsive?

Re >31 TadAD: another one about an author with OCD is Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood -- pretty funny take on OCD.

>31 TadAD:, 32 also Passing for Normal by Amy Wilensky

And Lucky Man, Michael J. Fox's struggle with Parkinson's, alcohol, and ego.

I love memoirs, too! Thanks for all the great recommendations!!!

teelgee: thanks for reminding me of Devil in the Details...I loved it!

I just finished The Late Bloomer's Revolution and have just started The Waiter Rant

I absolutely loved reading The Glass Castle. It was beautifully and lovingly written.

I read another memoir within a couple of weeks of that, called The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Homes which suffered in the comparison. She sounded whiney and selfish.

Another good memoir that I read recently was Born on a Blue Dayby Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant. His writing reflects his Asberger's, which I found fascinating. I especially liked how he describes how his mind sees and processes things.

I have Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas in my TBR pile for this fall.

I just finished Mysteries of My Father by Thomas Fleming, about an Irish American family in Jersey City in the mid-20th century. I loved it.

Another remarkable story is Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes.

The top two were already mentioned, but I think they were great:

I was one who was wowed by James Frey's A Million Little Pieces despite the controversy.

I, too, recommend The Glass Castle. I commend the author for her journalistic approach to her odd childhood and her ability to go on to a successful career and stable adulthood.

I also found A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel by Sylvia Nasar a fascinating albeit more difficult read. It's about the Nobel prize-winning mathematician John Nash who struggled with a life of schizophrenia. The book was written by his wife. The story was made into a motion picture. This is one book in which you should see the movie first. The book will then fill in the rest of the holes. It's quite a huge volume. The mathematical formulae may be skimmed! :)

Waiter Rant was absolutely fantastic! Anyone who eats in a restaurant should read this book!

I started reading Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian this morning - I'm about 70 pages in and so far I'm enjoying it.

#40 SqueakyChu - I loved A Beautiful Mind too - and I read it after the movie also.

Ditto #43!