Memoirs and autobiographies Message Board

Hmmm, recent favorites have been:

My Life in Orange by Tim Guest
In Good Company by James Martin
Passing for Thin by Frances Kuffel
Choosing Naia by Mitchell Zuckoff
Buying Dad by Harlyn Aizley
Brothel by Alexa Albert

:)

I'm really enjoying Ved Mehta's autobiographical series although they're quite hard to find and I'm reading them as I acquire them, ie all in the wrong order.

This is one of my largest library sections/ tags too.

Anyone else split tags by autobiography/biography? I put them all in biography and memoirs, too.

For me, the tags I use for these books are a bit of a jumble -- I use memoir, biography, autobiography, and ethnography. Some of the books might just have one of the four, but more often two.

I have split my tags, memoir, biography, autobiography.

I remember reading This boy's life by tobias wolff in college - and it was the strangest thing I've ever read. :) I got to the end and thought "well, that was different!" haha!

Until the two groups merge, I've joined both.

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

My favorite memoirs of all time? Hm, probably Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

What do you guys think about the whole James Frey scandal?

My top five autobiographies are:

With the Jocks - A soldier's struggle for Europe 1944 -45. It's written like a novel, but in reality was written 2 days after the actual event.
The Railway Man - Quite stunning, this was the only book I recommended to my grandfather, who was a fellow PoW.
Singapore Diary - My grandfather's diary, I have read a lot around this topic but I feel this gives a more rounded view of what the boys went through (yes, I'm biased)
Give me ten seconds - John Sergeant was a very well known political commentator in the UK, and just seemed to be in the right place at the right time
Making it happen: reflections on leadership - One of the first Captains of British industry, but I don't think he ever realised it.

tigerlodge - your grandfather`s book sounds interesting, I`ll have to seek out a copy some day - if only we could all find the time to read all the books we want to read !

I recall reading a book by a soldier from Newark, Notts, UK - Sam Derry about his experiences running a support network for escaped prisoners of war during W W 2 - worth a look.

I don`t read much in the way of memoirs etc, but one of my favourites is His Day is Marching On by Shirley Graham Du Bois aka Shirley Graham - life with the Civil rights pioneer. I think the man himself - who lived to be about 95 I think, wrote two or three largely autobiographical books Dusk of Dawn, The Autobiography of W E B Du Bois and maybe one other. I`ve not read Dusk of Dawn (yet), I have read Autobiography... - on balance I think his wife`s book is better.

allthesedarnbooks (great name), - what`s the JamesFrey scandal ? I`ve not heard about it.

Some of the best I've read in recent years are...

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz -- about the life of the well-known Israeli author whop grew up in Jerusalem prior to the creation of the state of Israel.

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar about John Nash. -- This was made into a movie. It's about the Nobel prize winning mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia. The book was written by his ex-wife.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt -- Pulitzer prize-winning novel written about the author's childhood of poverty in Ireland

The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman Also made into a moie which won Adrienne Brody an Academy award as best actor. The was the story of a pianist who suried teh Warsaw ghetto uprising. Although the book was written by the survior, teh story had not been made well known until his son published it in recent years.

Night by Elie Wiesel --the author's experiences of being a child during the the Nazi years in Europe and his experiences in a concentration camp.

Has anyone here read Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel? It's superb - literate, beautifully drawn, unflinching and unsparing and yet, at the very end, merciful. Recommended.

Others I enjoyed:

Things Can Only Get Better by John O'Farrell - hilarious account of a childhood spent according to ethical yet unfashionable left-wing principles
Halfway Heaven by Melanie Thernstrom - a study of a murder-suicide at Harvard University
True Blue by Daniel Topolski - an account of an attempted "coup" during training for the Oxford Boat Race, makes rowing sound interesting!
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain - the classic account of an Englishwoman's experiences and bereavements during WWI

i am really into memoirs by gay men for some reason. odd, since i am a straight female :)

two of my favorites are augusten burroughs and david sedaris.

Then you should at least have a look at I am not myself these days.

thank you. it's on my to be read list so i may have to move it up.

(Not a book, as far as I know, but also worth seeing: De-Lovely about Cole Porter, played by Kevin Kline and Wilde about Oscar Wilde, played by Stephen Fry.)

Does 'memoirs' mean autobiographies? If not:
Quite long (bought after having seen Carrington and admittedly not read): Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd.

And then there's the tag gay biography.

> 16

Does 'memoirs' mean autobiographies?

I think of "memoirs" as a person's account of a discrete period or episode of her life, while "autobiography" would cover her entire life.

here are some favorites:turgenev biography -
the gentle barbarian by v.s. Pritchett . It is a fascinating story about the greeat writer who was also a wealthy landowner in Russia. He owned serfs, yet was politically rather liberal, and freed them. He had a horrible mother that beat her serfs. It warped his life and made him leave Russia. He had a lifelong love affair with a famous married mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia who was the sister of Maria Malibran. Turgenev was close to her husband and acted as the family pet in Baden-Baden. I also enjoyed a lot of the Bloomsbury biographies: virginia woolf by quentin bell, roger fry by virginia woolf, the biography of vanessa bell and her daughtee's memoir betrayed with kindness by angelica garnett (daughter of vanessa bell and duncan grant but raised as the daughter of clive bell. )the holroyd biography of lytton Strachey is terrific, but it doesn't make clear to me why carrington worshiped him so and essentially gave up her painting career to be his platonic companion. strachey entertained his gay lovers right under her nose, and her husband ralph partridge slept with Strachey instead of her. Very muddled but ineresting.

There is a touching book written by the son of Wilhelm Reich titled A Book of Dreams: A Memoir of Wilhelm Reich by Peter Reich.

Wilhelm Reich ... was he a genius psychoanalyst and scientist or just a crazy quack (he was eventually arrested and imprisioned by the feds for some of his medical "techniques")? Probably he was both.

It doesn't really matter here, because this loving memoir details what it's like to grow up, idolizing a difficult and famous parent who was, on the one hand, loving and inspiring, on the other, inconsistent and unpredictable. It does, however, give a peek into the life of a real human that has baffled historians for decades.

I love this book. Orgone forever!

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

Another one for amanaceerdh:

I just read Born on a blue day : a memoir of Asperger's and an extraordinary mind by Daniel Tammet. Being gay isn't the main focus, but his partner does have a big positive influence.

Nothing to do with gay men, but a very pleasurable read:

The treehouse : eccentric wisdom from my father on how to live, love, and see by Naomi Wolf

I'd been wondering about the definition of memoir, and finally resorted to my print dictionaries. :-) According to my ancient, crumbling, unabridged Funk & Wagnall dictionary, a memoir is as likely to be biography as autobiography. The NT, it says, is a memoir of Jesus. My more modern dictionary gives "biography" as a 2nd definition.

Now I don't know what tag to use for some of my books!

I can't see a "biography" being a "memoir" at the same time; to me, memoirs are autobiographical-by-definition. "Autobiography" vs. "memoir" seems rather subjective.

If you google define: memoir the important part seems to be that the narrator was there in person.

(I only asked to find out if amanaceerdh would be interested in biographies as well as autobiographies, btw.)

> 6

There is also Biographies and Memoirs in the Non-Fiction Readers group.

I did Google. Then I looked in a couple of good dictionaries. (They didn't say "Look it up in your Funk and Wagnall" for nothing.) Memoirs can be autobiographical OR biographical. In the latter case, the author may have personal knowledge or access to private sources. I just got a 1908 "Memoir" --- the word is in the title --- written by the grandson of the subject.

I just finished reading Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison by T.J. Parsell. It is heartbreaking, beautiful, terrible & courageous. Has anyone here read it?

I really love Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. I think it's a perfect memoir for anyone who loves to read because the memoir is structured around the books their book club read. I also enjoy the way classics of the English canon like The Great Gatsby and Lolita are interpreted differently in a non-Western context. It's my favorite memoir, hands down.