What is your favorite Memoir and why?

[The Backlash Cometh]

[Political_Junkie]

1. Loitering With Intent by Peter O'Toole

I've never laughed so hard reading a book. The man is such a character.

[panader0]

2. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

It tells the gritty life in Limerick, Ireland.

[Political_Junkie]

4. Ooh, another good one.

'Tis was good also.

[Warpy]

3. "Little Me" by Patric Dennis

It was a parody tell-all book by a fading starlet, a sendup that sent them all up beautifully. If you read that one, you've read all the real ones.

Second was a real memoir, "The Naked Civil Servant" by Quentin Crisp.

[pscot]

5. Ulysses S. Grant

Great stuff.

[PanoramaIsland]

6. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.

It's his account of becoming involved in the radical leftist (mostly Anarchist) movement in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. I love Orwell, and I find myself fascinated with Spanish Anarchism as a moment in history. I can't say that it's objectively the Greatest Memoir Ever, but it's certainly my personal favorite.

[pscot]

7. I read it last year

for the first time. I liked it a lot. He seems amazingly apolitical considering the role he finds himself in. He wasn't a True Believer or a Party man. I also liked Down and Out in Paris and London.

[PanoramaIsland]

8. That he was able to revel in the power of that revolutionary moment without being a

True Believer or a Party man was one of his great strengths. It's what allowed him to write 1984 and Animal Farm - he could stay at enough of a distance from the ideology to both grok the spirit of it and see the potential problems.

[Hamlette]

9. Personal History

Katherine Graham

I'm not sure why that one stayed with me but I can remember tons of stuff from the book.

Maybe it was in part because I lived through it and it was a different perspective from All the President's Men (which I loved but is not biography)

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Ava's Man and All Over But The Shouting, by Rick Bragg.

2 books about his growing up in Northern Alabama.
The man is so lyrical, I read each book twice, once for the story, once for the beauty of his writing.
2 books that will remain on my shelf.

[Zarya]

11. Kathyryn Harrison, "The Kiss"

I had to read a memoir for one of the earlier journalism/non-fiction classes that I took. We were given a list to choose from, which had a small but decent selection, and the catch was that in a class of 30+ people, no more than two students could read the same book.

Ultimately, I ended up reading Kathyryn Harrison's memoir, "The Kiss" about her incestuous relationship with her father. Aside from the extremely taboo topic, the book was beautifully written. Her words were lyrical and poetic, and her pain/numbness leapt off the pages for me. Though, I could certainly see how it would be an acquired taste.

[pokerfan]

12. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

I read this not long after it was published. I was a few years out of college and it succinctly summarized my approach to the world and my innate rejection of rote learning. Sure, the essays are fun to read and the memoir can certainly be read as a mere collection of amusing (and sobering) stories there is also an underlying epistemological theme of truly understanding the nature of something rather than merely memorizing a bunch of facts to be regurgitated later. The subtitle (Adventures of a Curious Character) reaffirms this reading.



I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by
understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something.
Their knowledge is so fragile!

This is a two minute clip of Feynman explaining the difference between knowing something and naming something. If you can't read the book at least watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05WS0WN7zMQ

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world,
but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever
about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing
-- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between
knowing the name of something and knowing something.

[UrbScotty]

13. True Compass by Ted Kennedy

It gioves us a glimpse into a lot of things - among them, his early life in a vbery famous family, his coming of age, and his long career in the Senate.

[SheilaT]

14. Inside Daisy Clover.

It may be fiction, but it's in the form of a memoir, and exceptionally good. It's one of only three books in my lifetime that as soon as I finished it I turned right pack to the first page and started reading again.