Name Your Favorite Memoir

Bluestocking’d, Brilliant Reader,

Many of us are writing memoirs and all of us are cocky, opinionated, well-read, ornery and fascinating, so . . .

1. If all the memoirs in the world were on a burning ship, which one would you rescue from the flames?

2. What are your other favorite memoirs? 3. How is your memoir going? 4. What is your title?

Me? Here’s my list:

Casanova’s Story of My Life

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking

Richard Wright’s Black Boy

Earnest Hemingway’s A Movable Feast

Anonymous’s My Secret Life

Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club

Stephen King’s On Writing

Roxane Gay’s Hunger

And my new most favorite is . . .

I’m on the phone with Mary last night after she gets off The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, and I am shouting that she looks GORGEOUS, the false eyelashes are stunning, the lipstick a “sensation,” the hair the envy of mermaids, and so on and so forth, and I never tell her what I think about the book!

And here is what I think about the book: It is the memoir I would rescue…