Seeking great memoirs to read. Suggestions?

September 5, 2015 3:26 PM

Looking for some gripping, riveting memoirs to take me through the end of summer. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr is a gold standard. Always interested in anything about: family, addiction, the mind, overcoming obstacles, relationships, women-- as well as anything else that's just flat. out. amazing. Thanks!
posted by airguitar2 to Media & Arts (32 answers total)

If you don't mind graphic novels, I found Fun Home and Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel really engrossing.
posted by christinetheslp at 3:28 PM on September 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

I love love love A Girl Named Zippy. It had me in embarrassing hysterics on a plane one time.

And on a more serious note, The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn.
posted by something something at 3:31 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: One amazing memoir that fits your criteria is Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola.
posted by Fairchild at 3:32 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Francine du Plessix Gray - Them It's not as harrowing as The Liars' Club but it is still quite good.

I am reading Barbarian Days now and enjoying it immensely.
posted by Lycaste at 3:33 PM on September 5, 2015

Well, there's my book: 3500: An Autistic Boy's Ten-Year Romance with Snow White. Folks seem to like it.
posted by Lokheed at 3:45 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Brings to mind comparisons with Liar's Club is Mary King's Bastards.
posted by theRussian at 4:28 PM on September 5, 2015

Malraux: Anti-Memoirs
posted by Mr. Yuck at 4:53 PM on September 5, 2015

I liked Marianne Faithfull's autobiography an awful lot when I read it years ago.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 5:13 PM on September 5, 2015

Best answer: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller is about many of the things you mention and is very well told.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 5:22 PM on September 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Anthony Bourdain - A Cook's Tour-In Search of the Perfect Meal
Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals (he has many others)
Stephen Fry - Moab is My Washpot
Frank McCourt - Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt - Teacher Man
Frank McCourt - 'Tis
posted by pyro979 at 5:36 PM on September 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Redefining Realness, by Janet Mock. Ticks your women, family, relationships, and overcoming obstacles boxes. I have read a hell of a lot of memoirs by or about Trans women, and this one blows everything else out of the water.
posted by ActionPopulated at 5:44 PM on September 5, 2015

Steve Martin's Born Standing Up is fantastic.
I'm also really, really fond of Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:45 PM on September 5, 2015

Well I mean, it seems too obvious, but "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" is basically awesome.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 6:09 PM on September 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think you might like Wild by Cheryl Strayed or The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong.
posted by katieanne at 6:26 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's been a while since I read memoirs, but I remember very much enjoying

• Boy and Going Solo, Roald Dahl
• Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks
• The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi (I am not trying to be pretentious, seriously)
• Does Bossypants (Tina Fey) count?
• You want family and addiction? Try Augusten Burroughs's Running With Scissors and Dry

posted by cardioid at 6:51 PM on September 5, 2015

I recently read A Woman in Berlin about a woman's experience as the Russians entered Berlin at the end of WWII and can highly recommend it.
posted by perhapses at 7:01 PM on September 5, 2015

Best answer: I'm in the middle of reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's 6 volume memoir, and that may be more of a commitment than you want to make (or maybe it's not), but each book stands on its own as well. Here's book 1.
posted by FlyByDay at 7:20 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Boys of My Youth by JoAnn Beard ticks all of your boxes.
posted by sideofwry at 7:27 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Recently I've read and quite liked Son of a Gun and Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking which is really not a cookbook but a memoir.
posted by rdnnyc at 7:29 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Glass Castle?
posted by AwkwardPause at 7:31 PM on September 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart- a memoir of the first woman to work on the sales floor at the Tiffany department store. Set in New York City in 1945

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen- a woman returns to her Mennonite family after her husband leaves her for another man and she is in a car accident in the same week.

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill with Lisa Pulitzer
posted by Lay Off The Books at 7:53 PM on September 5, 2015

For my money "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers is still the gold standard for the modern memoir. If you hate Dave Eggers, you won't like it, but it's incredibly raw and honest and the antithesis of the calculated, cynical "bad shit happened to me, this will sell!" mentality that dominates the memoir market.
posted by drjimmy11 at 7:56 PM on September 5, 2015

I love Bitter Is The New Black by Jen Lancaster. Her others are good too, but this is my favorite by far.

I'm With The Band - Confessions of a Groupie by Pamela Des Barres is a total guilty pleasure and I loved it.
posted by SisterHavana at 8:48 PM on September 5, 2015

All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald is my absolute favorite.
posted by Iamthepassenger at 1:15 AM on September 6, 2015

Open by Andre Agassi was fascinating - covers his dislike for the game of tennis, as well as his struggle with addiction. Totally riveting, quick read, and was the first (auto)biography that made me realise that biographies can be more than just a recount of major events in someone's life.

For sheer stupid fun, read The Dirt - the autobiography of Motley Crue.
posted by chronic sublime at 2:06 AM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

White Cargo: A Memoir by British actress Felicity Kendal is one of my favorite books of all time. It is this completely bizarre, beautiful, fascinating account of a childhood roaming across India with her parents in the 1950s and 60s as part of a band of itinerant Shakespearean actors. To be honest, I have zero familiarity with her work as a TV actress--her memoir more than stands alone on its merits.

(Which, by the way, is what my father says about Obama's Dreams From My Father: if he wasn't already president, he could have a second career as memoirist.)
posted by whitewall at 3:41 AM on September 6, 2015

I enjoyed The Astronaut Wives Club, which covers all you're suggesting.
posted by hz37 at 4:17 AM on September 6, 2015

I love Autobiography of a Face.
posted by BibiRose at 5:17 AM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sammy Davis Jr.'s Yes I Can is a great, unsentimental autobiography that also includes lots of vignettes of show business and America in the '40s and '50s. Read it multiple times when I was younger.
posted by the sobsister at 8:10 AM on September 6, 2015

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn was unbelievably complex and powerful for a memoir along the lines of what you are looking for. More believable once I realized the author is also a poet.
posted by rw at 1:43 PM on September 6, 2015

First Comes Love by Marion Winik
The Art of Asking - Amanda Palmer
A Queer and Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein
posted by nuclear_soup at 8:01 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Madness or Wasted by Marya Hornbacher
Bluets or The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
posted by mermaidcafe at 9:10 PM on September 6, 2015