What a tough question! Like most things in life, ‘favorites’ are often rooted to specific moments in our lives, and our top picks can change. As a child, I adored Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women, and reread them many times. They ‘read’ differently through my adult eyes, but they still hold up—some more than others.
As for favorite memoirs, choosing one is a bit like naming your favorite food: can you pick only one? Depends what we’re in the mood for, right? Do we want a wild adventure, a reckoning with trauma, a peek into the life of a celebrity? Do we want to be inspired, transported, reassured, amazed, shocked, entertained, befriended, or guided? Memoirs can offer all these things, and great memoirs give us a bit of everything, or at least an assortment of flavors.
As for book agents, I know what they favor: celebrity memoirs. Celebrity sells! Even if a celebrity memoir is ghostwritten/poorly written/not-altogether-forthcoming, agents know the cover pics alone will sell the contents. But celebrity can be fleeting. I still come across donated memoirs written by forgotten contestants from American Idol, and wonder if anyone still reads them.
Two celebrity memoirs immediately come to mind when I think about my favorites. I read WHAT FALLS AWAY, by Mia Farrow, many years ago, and reread it years later with equal pleasure. Ms. Farrow is an eloquent writer who’s lived a remarkable life, surrounded by ‘celebrity’ from birth, yet humble and far from vapid. Her adoption stories were what attracted me to her memoir—I’ve adopted two kids, while she adopted TEN, and had four biological children—but I was captivated by her whole story. The quality of her writing has stayed with me, and I’m sure it’s one I could read again: the acid test of an excellent book!
The second is Michelle Obama’s BECOMING. I’ll bet many readers fell a bit in love with Michelle through her memoir, as I did. Her story is inspirational from start to finish—and it’s not over yet. I’m thankful she shared her remarkable journey with the world. I loved seeing Obama through her loving, yet non-idolizing, eyes. And she’s a great writer. Unlike other ‘political’ memoirs I’ve read (or struggled through), none of her chapters was in danger of losing my full interest.
What about you? Do you have any favorite celebrity memoirs you’d like to recommend? Are you drawn to celebrity memoirs, or are you wary of being disappointed? Have you reread any memoirs lately? Please share!
I love reading. In fact, my livingroom is lined with books, and there are books in every room of the house.
Now, trying to pare back a little as we would like to eventually move, I have been trying to move to ebooks.
Not quite the same
Still, I like those books like Anne of Green Gables. But most of the time, these days especially, but pretty consistently, I really like those meaty books….I love to learn. In fact, I crave learning. So books that explore those deep subjects of faith are high on my reading list.
Also, exploring things from the Jewish perspective of the Bible, freeing myself from the perspectives that I was taught over the last 40+ years and allowing the Bible to speak to me from my own cultural background and then reading various books that encourage this has been my passion lately. I am looking forward to diving into the Judaisms of Jesus Followers.
You might enjoy a newly-released novel (which is part one of a series) called Keziah’s Song, by Daryl Potter. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds like a book that fits your current passion!