Top 10 Tuesday! This week I’m taking a look at my favourite memoirs. This is a tricky one because I’ve read quite a few and have lots of favourites, but don’t have copies of some of the ones I’ve read recently and really liked (like Hunger Makes me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein!) Of course these are all memoirs by/about WOMEN. There’s a wide range of topics covered by these memoirs, from tree planting and hiking the PCT to musicians, to wacky upbringings with artists and revolutionaries, to prostitution, transgender experience, hostages, science fiction authors… ahh so many cool stories to tell. I could easily have done another top 20 but that’s setting the bar pretty high for all future Tuesdays haha.
So in no particular order:
- Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman – Lindy West (*funny!)
- How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir – Amber Dawn (*poetry!)
- Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter – Carmen Aguirre
- The Glass Castle – Jeanette Walls (*funny!)
- Just Kids – Patti Smith
- James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon – Julie Philips (technically a biography and not a memoir, but was written posthumously. Alice lived the most INSANE life!)
- Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More – Janet Mock
- Girl in the Woods – Aspen Matis (Better than Wild, in my humble opinion)
- A House in the Sky – Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett (*trigger warning, duh. This book is super traumatic)
- Eating Dirt – Charlotte Gill
Intriguing choices! I haven’t heard of most of them, so now I have some books to check out on goodreads 🙂 Here’s my TTT
https://mreadsbooks.wordpress.com/2016/09/27/ttt-3-books-on-my-fall-tbr/
The book in Alice Sheldon is long but totally amazing. She explored Africa as a child, was a CIA agent, had a successful science fiction writing career under a male alias (her real identity was a well kept secret) and so much more. A truly amazing woman.
Incredible!
I’ve always loved reading and seeing your list makes me wanna go find a library!
Definitely some great titles in the stack!
Love to read as well. Interesting choices.
I haven’t read any of these books, but I love reading, too. Now I’m starting Neverhome, by Laird Hunt.
Love, thp