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| Memoirs are perhaps the most
commonly read works of nonfiction, and they are consistently some of the most
popular choices among reading groups. Sometimes harrowing and
heartbreaking but always enlightening, these are books that lend
themselves to great discussion on a variety of topics. Here are just a few of
our recommendations in this category--read more about them, print our free
Reading Group Guides, and learn what other readers have to say! If you don't see a Reading Group Guide for your group's latest book club selection listed here, check out our generic memoir discussion tips, and your group can have have lively and engaging discussions no matter which book you choose.
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In her critically acclaimed memoir, the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the
crises of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate tells her story. Having grown up amid material
wealth and emotional isolation, Graham married a brilliant, charismatic man, only to watch him plunge into
mental illness and ultimately take his own life. But it was in the aftermath of Phil Graham's suicide that she
came into her own, shrugging off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressmen's union as
she entered the profane boys' club of the newspaper business. Read an excerpt.
A literary sensation, and a book that redefines both family and
narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks,
loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother.
Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and
wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a
family together. Read an excerpt.
As recalled in Honky, Dalton Conley's childhood has all of the classic elements
of growing up in America. But the fact that he was one of the few white boys in
a mostly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side
makes Dalton's childhood unique. Years after the privilege of being white
and middle class allowed Conley to leave the projects, his entertaining memoir
allows us to see how race and class impact us all. Perfectly pitched and
daringly original, Honky is that rare book that entertains even as it informs.
Read an excerpt.
"Our bookclub read K. Graham's book and we all thought it interesting that she was in on the first of the
women's movement without realizing it. We thought it was well done and interesting, too, that she didn't
realize the power she held." --ann (anniem@netropolis.net)
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