Read on... Life Stories : Reading Lists for Every Taste

by Reisner, Rosalind

• ISBN13: 9781591587668
• ISBN10: 1591587662
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-23
• Publisher: Libraries Unltd Inc

Summary

With the genre of memoirs filled with so many titles and from such a variety of authors, it is hard to grasp what's available and what's worth reading. For all those who love delving into the lives of others, this Read On... volume offers help.Read On...Life Stories: Reading Lists for Every Taste offers brief descriptions of nearly 450 published memoirs, from classics like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , to recent bestsellers like John Grogan's Marley and Me and Julie Andrews' Home . Titles are grouped together by their appeal to readers, and there is something for everyone: humorous memoirs, thrilling adventure stories, chatty celebrity reminiscences, cathartic dramas of family dysfunction, fascinating career retrospectives, and insightful stories of family and personal lives in many eras and places.

Author Biography

Rosalind Reisner is a writer, speaker, and librarian who presents programs and writes about books, reading, and readers' advisory services. Her published works include Jewish American Literature: A Guide to Reading Interests, winner of the 2004 Judaica Reference Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	p. vii
Introduction	p. ix
Character	p. 1
Beating the Odds: Survivors of Awful Childhoods	p. 2
Behind the Scenes: Celebrities' Lives	p. 4
Being Different: Introspective Memoirs	p. 6
Breaking Free: Overcoming Adversity	p. 9
Caught in the Crossfire: People in Danger	p. 11
Crossing Borders: Making a Life in a New Country	p. 13
Extraordinary Women's Lives	p. 16
Fathers and Sons	p. 18
Fractured Families: From Adversity to Insight	p. 20
Identity Papers: Discovering Our True Selves	p. 23
Insiders: People Who Made History	p. 25
Marching to Their Own Drum: Unique Individuals	p. 27
Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons	p. 29
Passage to Adulthood: Coming-of-Age Memoirs	p. 31
Then There Were Two: Love and Marriage	p. 34
Who Goes There? Struggling with Mental Illness	p. 36
Story	p. 39
Crooked Lives: People Behaving Badly	p. 40
Dishing: Stories from the Kitchen	p. 42
Faultlines: Difficult Family Relationships	p. 45
Four Seasons: Memoirs of One Year	p. 47
In Harm's Way: Lives at Risk	p. 49
Living to Tell the Tale: Near-Death Experiences	p. 51
Moments of Truth: Stories of Turning Points	p. 53
Off the Beaten Path: Unusual Adventures	p. 56
Pet Projects: The Animals in Our Lives	p. 59
Relativity: Unusual Family Experiences	p. 61
Rooting Around: Searching for Family Origins	p. 63
Sports Talk	p. 65
Under Fire: Stories of War	p. 67
Setting	p. 71
Eureka! Scientists at Work	p. 72
Far Out: Travel to Unusual Places	p. 74
Foreign Exchange: Encountering Other Cultures	p. 76
A Hard Day's Night: Life in the Music Business	p. 80
Life Support: Memoirs from the Medical World	p. 82
Orient Express: Travel to the Far East and Oceania	p. 84
Outside the Box: Interesting Occupations	p. 86
The Passing Scene: Road Trips	p. 89
Primal Scenes: Vivid Childhood Memoirs	p. 91
Small Is Beautiful: Life in Rural America	p. 94
Under African Skies	p. 95
Language	p. 99
The Definite Article: Writers on Their Lives	p. 100
Depth of Field: Insightful Writers	p. 102
Full Disclosure: Writing from the Heart	p. 104
The Great Outdoors: Communing with Nature	p. 106
Loud and Clear: Unique Voices	p. 108
Luminous Prose: Elegant Memoirs	p. 110
Private Worlds: Diaries	p. 112
Short and Sweet: Under 200 Pages	p. 114
Mood	p. 117
A Backward Glance: Nostalgic Memoirs	p. 117
Growing Up Absurd: Unusual Childhoods	p. 120
Laugh Lines: Memoirs on the Lighter Side	p. 122
Renewal: Life-Altering Experiences	p. 124
Taking It On Faith: Spiritual Journeys	p. 127
The Ties that Bind: Bittersweet Family Stories	p. 129
Undertow: Edgy, Dark Memoirs	p. 132
Index	p. 135
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