Magical Memoir Moments
The Truthiness of Fiction: A Review of Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True-Life Novel
Do you remember your father’s workbench? I can still smell the oil, paint, tools, and see the big black vise at the end of the bench. Guest blogger Lanie Tankard was moved by her own memories as she read about the father’s workbench in Fred Setterberg’s new book. Other times, she was more perplexed than…
Memory and Truth–Three Different Memoirs from One Family
You may have read about how Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs created dissension in his own family and in the family of Dr. Finch, the psychiatrist with whom Burroughs went to live at the age of 13. There have been law suits charging defamation of character and invasion of privacy. This book, which was…
Telling the Truth About One's Life: Memoir Controversies
What would a memoir blog be without a category for memoir controversy? Can you trust the label of memoir when it appears on a book? Today’s writers, editors, and their lawyer’s are continuing to ask Pontius Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” Most readers, myself included, expect that the basic facts reported in memoir correlate to…
A New Earth and the Quest for the Essential Self
Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose was a runaway bestseller earlier this year, due in large part to the enthusiastic embrace Oprah Winfrey gave it on her show and in the ten-week internet classes she conducted with Tolle beginning in March, 2008. The book sold 3.5 million copies in the first…