Magical Memoir Moments
The Girls from Ames: A Group Biography/Collective Memoir
“Sociologists now have data showing that women who can maintain friendships through the decades are healthier and happier, with stronger marriages, ” says Jeffrey Zaslow in the introduction to The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship. If you are a woman, and if you have a group of life-long close…
My First Rock Concert: A Mini-Memoir
Rock music is like a foreign language to me even though I graduated from high school in 1966 and college in 1970. Like many explanations of my most anomalous behaviors, this one goes back to being Mennonite. And a little geeky (meaning bookish–not a math whiz!) on top of that. I like to joke that…
Malcolm Gladwell's Memoir–Did You Know He Wrote One?
If you have read The Tipping Point or Blink, or if you watch talk shows or read The New Yorker, you don’t need an introduction to Malcolm Gladwell. Every book he writes becomes a bestseller. Gladwell claims he’s no genius. He’s not just lucky, either. He would tell you that he is the product of…
Sarah Palin's Independence Day
You don’t have to be a seer to recognize material for political celebrity memoir these days. Everyone knew that Sarah Palin would ink a book deal (even though she would not ink the memoir herself). Sure enough, HarperCollins signed her. The August issue of Vanity Fair includes an in-depth portrait of Palin by Todd S….
An Old-Age Memoir: Somewhere Towards the End
Oddly enough, as a child I was enchanted by Grandma Moses. I loved the fact that she made art out of many of the same experiences I was having growing up on a farm–gardening, sledding, planting, and harvesting. When she died in 1960, I was 12. But when she was born, Abraham Lincoln had not…
Beach books? Memoirs Recommended by Readers
The CBC Canada Reads Book Club picked these ten memoirs as their top ten: 1. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls 2. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah 3. Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi 4. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius…
Top 10 Memoirs: If You Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine!
Let me begin with an apology for slacking off on blogging this past week. I probably will continue a low profile until June 30th, after an important board meeting, and after I have finished a book review to send to Christian Century. But how lovely it would be if we together could make some progress…
Top 100 Memoirs: Which Ones are Essential?
Embarrassing story: When I was a newbie grad student at the University of Texas at Austin, I turned in a review of a book that my professor did not recognize. He asked me why I chose this book to review. I responded, “Because it was on my shelf.” He looked horrified. As Paul Newman might…