Memoirs

When I lived on the OTHER side of Wright St. and was childless, I loved to take late night walks in neighborhoods near downtown.  I was fascinated by the glimpses I would catch of other people's lives through their apartment windows.  Did they have photographs or paintings (or batik cloth) on the walls?  Were their shelves full of stacks of books or rows of DVDs?  I loved to see the myriad way people utilized their balconies.  Did they have one covered with window boxes?  Did they have a great chair to sit and read on?  Was it a collection of bikes and other athletic gear?   I was fascinated by what these glimpses told me about the inhabitants of these dwellings.  In the same way, memoirs can be fascinating because of that glimpse they give you into the way other people live.  These are the titles from the memoir section of 501 Must-Read Books.


  1.  Paula, Isabel Allende
  2.  Journal Intime, Genri-Frederic Amiel
  3.  Aubrey's Brief Lives, John Aubrey
  4.  Confessions, Augustine
  5.  Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir
  6.  My Left Foot, Christy Brown
  7.  The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Benvenuto Cellini
  8.  The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus, Cyril Connolly
  9.  Boys: Tales of Childhood, Roald Dahl
10.  My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
11.  An Angel at My Table, Janet Frame
12.  The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
13.  Journals 1889-1949, Andre Paul Guillaume Gide
14.  Poetry and Truth: From My Own Life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
15.  Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments, Edmund Gosse
16.  Ways of Escape, Graham Greene
17.  Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin
18.  84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
19.  Pentimento, Lillian Hellman
20.  Childhood, Youth, and Exile, Alexander Herzen
21.  The Diary of Alice James, Alice James
22.  Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Carl Gustav Jung
23.  Diaries 1919-23, Franz Kafka
24.  The Story of My Life, Helen Keller
25.  The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe
26.  I Will Bear Witness, Bictor Klemperer
27.  In the Castle of My Skin, George Lamming
28.  A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis
29.  The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay
30.  The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Katherine Mansfield
31.  The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
32.  The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
33.  Borrowed Time, Paul Monette
35.  My Place, Sally Morgan
35.  Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Vladimir Nabokov
36.  Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi
37.  Memoirs, Pablo Neruda
38.  Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson
39.  Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
40.  Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
41.  Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda
42.  Diary, Samuel Pepys
43.  Letters, Pliny the Younger
44.  Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
45.  Words, Jean-Paul Sartre
46.  Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton
47.  Walden, Henry David Thoreau
48.  De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
49.  Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
50.  Autobiographies, William Butler Yeats

I could think of no better book for a Busy Bibliophile than to read Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books.  I am currently reading it, and I must say, not only am I enjoying it as a memoir, it is also piquing my curiosity regarding other "Must Read" books on my list.   Do you have a favorite memoir?  Have your read any of these?  Let me know what you're thinking.