Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Angela's Ashes -by Frank McCourt

Can't believe no one posted this! From Amazon:
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy-- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Weird, I was just clicking on this thread to post this. Not the most uplifting read throughout, but a good memoir by a strong writer (some of those celebrity ones, while very entertaining, are not that well-written).

Anonymous wrote:

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot (bio, not a memoir, but it really is good. About a woman who died years ago whose cells were harvested without her families consent.)

Anonymous wrote:Hey OP, I got this week's issue of People magazine and I immediately thought of you.

Look in the book section and there is a list of good summer romantic beach reads.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, at the risk of coming of as an idiot...what exactly is the difference between a memoir and an auto-biography?

Good question.

I think they are the same thing.

Anonymous wrote:Angela's Ashes -by Frank McCourt

Can't believe no one posted this! From Amazon:
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy-- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Anonymous wrote:Thank you OP for this topic. I too am addicted and have read many many mentioned. Great ones missing so far:

Scar Tissue (Anthony Kiedis)

Comeback (Claire and Mia Fontaine)

1185 Park Avenue ( Anne Roiphe)

High on Arrival (Mackenzie Phillips)

Anonymous wrote:Read the one about Marjorie Merriweather Post. Absolutely fascinating but a long read.

Also, the one about Evalyn Walsh McLean, the last owner of the Hope Diamond, and longtime DC resident. I can't believe someone hasn't made a movie about this yet.