Best Books List: Memoir and Autobiography

Making that Best Books List for Comedy a few weeks back really made me wonder why I didn’t include comedy on my Best Books List. Then I wondered why I didn’t include memoir, history, travel, nonfiction, food, journalism, graphic novels, YA, and literary. Besides (already included) philosophy and religion, these are all things I love to read. But I like to read the best of them. There is a lot of overlap on these lists, and they tend to be a bit myopic; perhaps in the future I’ll have to add a best of indie or best of self-published. Until then, I am going to do a series on more best books list, by subject.

And no, I didn’t come up with these. I just put them together by comparing best books genre lists from the more reliable sources I could find. In no particular order, this week, it’s…

Memoirs and Autobiography (with a little Biography)

Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom
Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (read this awhile ago. Maybe four stars?)
A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah (One of the last things I read before starting the Best Books list. Again, maybe four stars.)
Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs (also on the comedy list)
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin (also on the comedy list)
The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
Night, Elie Wiesel (How many times has this been recommended to me?)
Speak, Memory, Vladamir Nobokov
The Liars Club, Mary Karr
Maus, Art Spiegelman
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
Darkness Visible, William Stryon
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolf
Lives of the Ceasars, Seutonius
Experience, Martin Amis
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell
Eminent Victorians, Lytton Stratchey
Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves
The Moon’s a Balloon, David Niven
Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald
The Diaries of Samuel Pepys, Samuel Pepys (I have wanted to read these forever)
De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
Alan Clark: Diaries, Alan Clark
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (read a long time ago)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (read in high school) *
Wild Swans, Jung Chang
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell (so going to read this ASAP)
Out of Africa, Karen Blixen
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (saw the movie)
Amazing Grace, Eric Metaxas
The Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet, Beverly Cleary
No Pretty Pictures, Anita Lobel
Poet Warrior, Joy Harjo