memoir

Deraniyagala, a Sri Lankan by birth and a Londoner for college and beyond, was vacationing with her parents, her husband, and her two small children in Sri Lanka for Christmas in 2004, as was their family tradition. They were staying in a hotel not too far from the water. The day after Christmas, she looked out the window and noticed that the water seemed a little closer than usual. She called for her husband to come look – and then. AND THEN. Deraniyagala’s husband, parents and two boys were killed in the Tsunami that devastated the country but somehow she survived. This is the opening

With interwoven recipes and memories, Molly Wizenberg divulges her story, a memoir that blossoms from a blog she created in the aftermath of her father’s death. 

While the stories are splotchy little essays that capture only fragments of Wizenberg’s life, they are immensely powerful.  After reading the chapter “La Boule Miche,” I immediately scurried to the kitchen and scrounged up a piece of salted dark chocolate and a leftover hunk of a baguette.  I suspect that I am not the only reader who has done this. 

I found myself reading entire paragraphs of this book out loud just to hear the

In A Private History of Awe, Scott Russell Sanders takes a thunderstorm and illustrates how it can dance across three generations. Sanders not only spotlights the beauty and spectacle a thunderstorm can create, but also its rude and wild fury.

This is one man’s deeply personal path of awe, a memoir of sorts, but mostly the story of how one soul can become so beautifully entangled in both life and death. Throughout the story of Sanders’ life are these spectacular vignettes of his newborn grandchild as she embarks on her new path and his mother, who is at the end of hers, creating a richly

Jeanette Winterson is an acclaimed British author who has written over 20 books, the first of which, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the Whitbread Prize, was then made into a television show, and is currently assigned reading for teens. Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal is her autobiography, and oh what a story she tells.

Winterson is the adopted daughter of a Pentecostal couple. A large portion of Why be Happy is about the author’s mother – both the comedy and tragedy of her life – and how her fierce censorship of books led Jeanette to a profound love for them. She reads secretively

Grant Morrison is something of a divisive figure in the world of comics. Some people love him, while others can't stand him, finding him pretentious and deliberately obtuse. I'm one of the people who think he's brilliant. I love his comics, especially when he writes superheroes, so I jumped on Supergods as soon as it came out.

Supergods is part overview of the history of superheroes, focusing mostly on the two big comics companies, DC and Marvel, and part autobiography/memoir. Morrison gives a broad history of superheroes, interjecting his own opinions on various trends, characters and

As a non-Christian reader, I found Isaacs’s memoir more whiney than snarky. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy some aspects of the book. But I found myself wondering why Isaacs repeatedly makes bone-headed personal and professional choices based on what she thinks God wants her to do. And then claims to have been “torched by God”.

 I was especially put off by Isaacs’s therapy sessions, where she engages in couples counseling in order to divorce God. Her counselor makes her imagine what God and Jesus say in their defense to all her whining. I mean snark. Again, why is she trying to second

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend time behind bars in a maximum security prison?  Award winning poet and writer Jimmy Santiago Baca knows exactly what it is like to be in prison.  A Place to Stand is Baca's memoir of his troubled early life, subsequent incarceration in prison at the age of 21 for selling drugs and how he turned his life around and be came an award winning poet and writer.

Baca's early life in New Mexico was not easy and unquestionably violent.  Abandoned by everyone he entered the legal system as an "orphan" and then as a  juvenile deliquent.  However, the

Kimberlee Auerbach is hilarious.  She won’t admit it, though.  Oh, sure, she’ll tell you about stalking a boyfriend’s ex, about an ill-fated high school campaign slogan, about constant reminders that she hates her job and is still not married, and, finally, about the tarot card reader she called on to figure it all out.  She’ll freely tell you about her neuroses and her most embarrassing moments (some are definitely, um, adult oriented), but she won’t tell you about her genius, her comedic timing, or her so beguiling self deprecation.  She’ll let you discover and read through those parts on

Cartoonist Joyce Farmer has created a graphic masterpiece entitled Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir which chronicles the decline and death of her elderly parents. Living in southern Los Angeles, Lars and Rachel have enjoyed a long, happy life together but old age is starting to affect their ability to cope with everyday occurrences. Their daughter Laura (presumably Joyce) starts helping them with grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, laundry, hygiene and doctor visits but as their health deteriorates, she finds it difficult to manage her own life plus care for them. Rachel eventually goes blind

In her memoir of early life with photography icon Robert Mapplethorpe, Godmother of Punk Patti Smith has crafted an evocative tale of how two kids from New Jersey and Long Island, once factory workers and hustlers, rose to the upper echelons of the art world. And she does a good job with that. Enough to win the National Book Award. Enough to appear on The Colbert Report and gobs of other shows.

But it wasn’t the starving artists plucking lice from each other’s hair moving on to rubbing louse-free wigs with Warhol’s dandies that got me hooked. What I liked most about this book was the dear

I have been a fan of Augusten's for quite some time. I have read all of his books and enjoyed almost all of those books. This latest memoir was a disappointment. I looked for the humor and the heartbreak that his previous memoirs had, but this one fell short. I found myself not wanting to continue, but I had to (because I am a librarian after all).
This memoir is one of Christmas memories-none of them memorable to anyone but Augusten.
I found myself bored and uninterested in any of the characters he wrote about. In fact, I think the most interesting story is about a French-speaking Santa Claus

The publishers tout this book as a funny memoir about a white girl who is raised in a poor, predominately African-American inner-city by her divorced dad who acts like a black man. I thought I would love it since I was the kind of white girl raised in a predominantly affluent, white suburb who felt stifled by mainstream culture and fantasized about living in a more diverse world. But after reading it, I was just plain sad.

I don’t think this book is about racial differences as much as it’s about class inequities. And bad parenting. It would have worked for me if Wolff hadn’t tried to be so

Little book, big impact. Despite its small size this memoir is similar to other personal accounts written to reflect on life after a spouse dies. It joins the ranks of Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion searching for peace and paying tribute to their lost love. But while those authors lovingly look back on their long marriage, Kate Braestrup needs to face her future reality as a young wife and mother of four when her husband is killed in a car crash. This tragedy causes her to re-invent herself. She pursues her husband’s dream and becomes a Unitarian Universalist minister. She then becomes one of

I’m generally a big fan of depressive ruminations, so you can imagine my dismay in discovering Nathan Rabin’s memoir The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture is funny and a fast read. Rabin’s memoir focuses on his involuntary commitment to a mental hospital after a suicide attempt, followed by getting dumped in a group home as an adolescent after his mother abandons him and his father, who is disabled, can no longer care for him. Rabin is a film critic and head writer for The Onion’s AV Club, so his memoir is organized with chapter headings that refer to movies and other pop

When David was eleven, a family friend noticed a bump in his neck. Three and a half years later he would finally have the lump removed. Despite being told he was fine, two surgeries left David with only one vocal chord and a huge scar down his throat and neck. It wasn’t until later that David would learn he had had cancer and had not been expected to live. Small, a well-deserved award winning illustrator possesses an almost creepy ability to convey complex emotions through his drawings. The story itself is remarkable and the illustrations serve to heighten the impact. A must read regardless of