TOP TEN TUESDAY | FAVOURITE MEMOIRS

Technically the topic this week is “Books From My Favourite Genre” but since that would probably be literary fiction, it felt a bit broad and somewhat of a cop-out. So instead I’ve chosen memoirs, as it’s a genre I have been reading more of lately, and have definitely found some of my favourite books in!

Memoirs about health and mental health:

Patient is one of my favourite reads of the year so far, and is a memoir of serious physical illness by Ben Watt, Tracey Thorn’s other half and one of the members of Everything But the Girl. The next two are also favourites of mine. My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is written by the husband of a woman who ends up hospitalized for an episode of psychosis, and not only discusses that harrowing experience but how they deal with the aftermath. Furiously Happy is a first-person account of living with multiple mental health issues (anxiety, depression, etc.). I just finished Brain On Fire, and while it didn’t stand up to the others in terms of writing and emotional connection, I nonetheless thought it was well worth reading and an important story to be shared.

Travel Memoirs

I love travel memoirs. Peter Mayle’s A Year In Provence and Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun were two of the first books that had me wanting to move to Europe and never come back. They both evoke a sense of place as well as providing amusing anecdotes of what it’s like trying to navigate a foreign culture as a new local. I love Bill Bryson’s travel memoirs, but In A Sunburned Country is probably the funniest. Travels isn’t strictly speaking about traveling – it includes some travel sections, but also some straight up memoir about his life. The whole thing is equally entertaining and thought provoking, though. A few others I would highly recommend are Nothing to Declare by Mary Morris, Along the Inca Road by Karin Muller and The Size of the World by Jeff Greenwald.

Music Memoirs

Neither of these are strictly music memoirs, but both are by musicians and include at least some consideration of creativity. I feel like they belong side-by-side, though, because in addition to being by musicians, they also share a tone of quiet introspection and a delicacy in writing style that puts them together in my mind.

Coming of Age

This book was by turns hilarious, awkward, infuriating and educational. It’s definitely one I’d recommend to young women just heading out into the adult world, or for anyone who is a fan of Lena Dunham’s hit show, Girls.

Family memoirs

These are all about family, but very different. Life Among the Savages is Shirley Jackson’s account of the hilarity and confusion of raising a young family on very little money while trying to carve out a moment or two here and there to write. Love, Nina is Nina Stibbe’s account of her time as a nanny for the editor of the London Review of Books (one of their neighbours was Alan Bennet) and is in equal parts a portrait of the family and an account of her struggles to find her own place in the world. And finally, The Corfu Trilogy is Gerald Durrell’s series of memoirs about his family’s time spent on the island of Corfu in Greece in the 1930s. Charming, hilarious and full of information about the natural world (he grew up to become a naturalist and zookeeper), there’s nothing I don’t love about this. The last two are also British TV series.

Journalism/Narrative Non-Fiction

I’m not sure if Newjack really counts as memoir – it is, but it straddles the line between memoir and narrative non-fiction or journalism. But I loved it, and will take any chance to mention it. It’s about Ted Conover’s year spent working as a prison guard at Sing Sing after being refused access to interview employees. Full of important information about the US prison-industrial system, as well as discussion of how this work affects the guards.

Reading and Education

Q’s Legacy is one of my all-time favourite books. While most readers are more familiar with Hanff’s epistolary novel, 84, Charing Cross Road, this one was actually my favourite as it gave more insight into Helene’s life. I wish more than anything that I could have been her friend, because I think we would have gotten along famously!

That’s it for my favourite books from the memoir genre. I’d love to hear your favourites, and if you’ve read any of these, tell me whether they were favourites of yours and why or why not!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.