must-read memoirs
20+ of the absolute best examples of the only nonfiction I read
I’m not a nonfiction girl.
Try as I might, it just doesn’t have any of the things I read for: transformative storytelling, unforgettable characters, resonant themes. Beautiful writing feels harder to come by. Counterintuitively it lacks those moments of yes, I lived through that exactly, how strange that this small and specific feeling I thought I invented was shared by some Russian guy who lived 200 years ago and managed to write it down.
Except in the case of memoirs.
Memoirs are a fiction reader’s nonfiction cheat code. They have everything that great stories have, but they do them one better: they’re true.
I’ve been known to read a book just by virtue of its presence in the genre.
Culled from the over one hundred I’ve picked up, these are the ones I’m announcing that you have to, too.
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Classic Memoirs
I am a defender of classics on all fronts, so it’s no surprise that I think a lot of the big names in the genre are goodies. I’d say these are the most worth your time:
My Life in France by Julia Child
It’s impossible to read this without hearing her voice in your mind. Or, if you had a childhood like mine (spent mostly making your siblings watch the same five DVDs until they were scratched over and impossible to watch without losing your mind), Meryl Streep’s impression of her voice. Either way it’s as buttery and yummy and delightful as everything Julia Child did.
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
This passed two of my tests for a book I’ll remember for a long time: the ending made me tear up and the dearth of hardcover copies for sale made me look up first editions reprints on eBay. This is also a great book to read in public when you are looking for a bit more attention, or generally to keep people on their toes.
Just Kids by Patti Smith
People do not like when I say this, but it is my true and pure feeling in my heart so I am going to say it anyway: this is the absolute most fun and impressive a book that is made up of, generously, 40% names can possibly be. Patti Smith is a legend and a treasure.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Who’s surprised. This is, at its core, a Didion fan account.
It’s not an unusual take to say that Joan Didion’s nonfiction was stronger than her fiction, and while her essays are my favorites by her I also find her memoirs on grief astonishing. I read this in the days after her passing and I couldn’t have better understood what a loss it was.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I’m not a big poetry fan (it’s a leftover symptom of being an edgy English major and, like wearing too much eyeliner and trying to manage seeming rebellious to my professors without risking my A, will go away eventually), so I am under-read in Maya Angelou’s work. This book, searing in its honesty and its brilliance and its suffering, made me realize how much I need to remediate that.
Memoirs by Great Authors
I have gone on the record many times, both because I hold my opinions firmly and because I forget whether I’ve said something or just thought it really hard, with what would be one of my many declarations if somehow my life 180’d and I ended up in a position of power:
All the authors I like have to write a memoir.
In addition to some of those mentioned above, here are the ones ahead of the curve:
