MEMOIRS
General
YOU’RE NEVER WEIRD ON THE INTERNET
(ALMOST) BY FELICIA DAY
Actress, social media
phenomenon, and Web video
star Felicia Day shares her
unusual upbringing, her
early failures, and how she
embraced her individuality
to become successful.
260 pages
WALDEN ON WHEELS BY KEN ILGUNAS
"In this frank and witty memoir, Ken
Ilgunas lays bare the existential
terror of graduating from the
University of Buffalo with $32,000 of
student debt. Ilgunas set himself an
ambitious mission: get out of debt as
quickly as possible. Inspired by the
frugality and philosophy of Henry
David Thoreau, Ilgunas undertook a
3-year transcontinental journey,
working in Alaska as a tour guide,
garbage picker, and night cook to pay
off his student loans before
hitchhiking home to New York.”
296 pages
AMERICAN SHAOLIN BY MATTHEW POLLY
“Growing up a 98-pound weakling
tormented by bullies in the
schoolyards of Kansas, Matthew
Polly dreamed of one day
journeying to the Shaolin Temple
in China to become the toughest
fighter in the world, like Caine in
his favorite 1970s TV series Kung
Fu….The story of the 2 years
Matthew spent in China living,
studying, and performing with the
Shaolin monks. The Chinese term
for tough training is chi ku (‘eating
bitter’) and Matthew quickly
learned to appreciate the phrase.”
366 pages
DESERT SOLITAIRE: A SEASON IN
THE WILDERNESS
BY EDWARD ABBEY
“An account of the author's
existence, observations and
reflections, as a seasonal
park ranger in southeast
Utah.”
337 pages
ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
BY JAMES HERRIOT
Delve into the magical,
unforgettable world of James
Herriot, the world's most
beloved veterinarian, and his
menagerie of heartwarming,
funny, and tragic animal
patients.
499 pages
A BIG LITTLE LIFE: A MEMOIR OF A JOYFUL
DOG NAMED TRIXIE BY DEAN KOONTZ
The author presents a
tribute to his late golden
retriever, Trixie, that
describes his family's
adoption of the retired
service animal, the
numerous lessons he
learned throughout their
relationship, and the
family's grief upon her
passing.
271 pages
Interlibrary Loan at
Voorheesville Public Library
THUNDER DOG: THE TRUE STORY OF A BLIND
MAN, HIS GUIDE DOG, AND THE TRIUMPH OF
TRUST AT GROUND ZERO BY MICHAEL
HINGSON
Discover how blindness
and a bond between dog
and man saved lives
and brought hope
during one of America’s
darkest days.
232 pages
Interlibrary Loan at the
Voorheesville Public Library
MY LIFE IN FRANCE BY JULIA CHILD
The legendary food expert
describes her years in
Paris, Marseille, and
Provence and her journey
from a young woman who
could not cook or speak
any French to the
publication of her
cookbooks and becoming
"The French Chef.“
317 pages
HOW STARBUCKS SAVED MY LIFE: A SON
OF PRIVILEGE LEARNS TO LIVE LIKE
EVERYONE ELSE BY MICHAEL GATES GILL
In his 50’s, Michael Gates
Gill had it all. By the
time he turned 60, he had
lost everything. Then as
he sat in a Manhattan
Starbucks, the manager,
half joking, offered him a
job. With nothing to lose,
he took it, and went from
a Brooks Brothers suit to
serving coffee in a green
uniform. 265 pages
JOURNALS BY KURT COBAIN
Kurt Cobain filled dozens of
notebooks with lyrics,
drawings, and writings
about his plans for Nirvana
and his thoughts about
fame, the state of music,
and the people who bought
his music….his journals
reveal an artist who loved
records, who knew the
history of rock, and was
determined to define his
place in that history.
294 pages
CLAPTON: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“One of the very best
rock autobiographies
ever.”
343 pages
Available at the
Voorheesville Public Library
921 CLAPTON
PINK BOOTS AND A MACHETE: MY JORUNEY
FROM NFL CHEERLEADER TO NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER BY MIREYA MAYOR
A daughter of Cuban
immigrants blossomed
from NFL cheerleader
to Fulbright Scholar to
field scientist and
adventurer.
301 pages
GROWING UP AMISH: A MEMOIR
BY IRA WAGLER
One fateful starless night, 17-year-old
Ira Wagler got up at 2 AM,
left a scribbled note under his pillow,
packed all of his earthly belongings
into in a little black duffel bag,
and walked away from his home in the
Amish settlement of Bloomfield,
Iowa.
271 pages
TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE
BY MITCH ALBOM
Recounts his weekly visits
with a dying teacher who
years before had set him
straight.
“A wonderful book, a story of
the heart told by a writer
with soul.”
192 pages
LOST IN PLACE BY MARK SALZMAN
The oldest child in a middle class
household in Connecticut, the son
of a piano teacher and a social
worker, by age six the author was
an eccentric with enormous
aspirations – none of them ever
fulfilled – who stood out not only
from his more conventional parents
and brother and sister but from
everyone else in his suburban
neighborhood. A hilarious memoir.
269 pages
TRUE NOTEBOOKS: A WRITER’S YEAR
AT JUVENILE HALL BY MARK SALZMAN
In 1997, the author paid a
reluctant visit to a writing
Class at L.A.’s Central
Juvenile Hall, a lockup for
violent teenage offenders,
many of them charged
with murder. What he
found so moved and
astonished him that he
began to teach there
regularly.
330 pages
THE HUNGRY OCEAN: A SWORDBOAT
CAPTAIN’S JOURNEY BY LINDA GREENLAW
She's smart, hard-working and good at
what she does, though sometimes she
wishes she had a life. Greenlaw is
captain of the Hannah Boden, sister
ship to the Andrea Gail, the swordfishing boat whose disappearance was
described with agonizing verisimilitude
in Sebastian Junger's bestseller, The
Perfect Storm. Greenlaw tells a
comparatively quotidian tale, "the true
story of a real, and typical, swordfishing trip, from leaving the dock to
returning.“ 258 pages
A WALK IN THE WOODS: REDISCOVERING
AMERICA ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL BY BILL
BRYSON
After living for many years in England, Bill
Bryson moved back to the United States
and decided to reacquaint himself with his
country by taking to this uninterrupted
"hiker's highway." Before long, Bryson
and his infamous walking companion,
Stephen Katz, are stocking up on
insulated long johns, noodles and manuals
for avoiding bear attacks as they prepare
to set off on a walk that is both amusingly
ill-conceived and surprisingly
adventurous.
276 pages
PILGRIMAGE ON A STEEL RIDE: A MEMOIR
ABOUT MEN AND MOTORCYCLES BY GARY
PAULSEN
At 57, with heart
disease and a bad case
of wanderlust, Gary
Paulsen decided to get
himself the motorcycle
of his dreams and take
it to Alaska from his
home in New Mexico.
This is his story.
179 pages
ROCKET BOYS BY HOMER HICKAM, JR.
14-year-old Homer Hickam
decided in 1957 to build his
own rockets. They were his
ticket out of Coalwood, West
Virginia, a mining town
that everyone knew was
dying…He grew up to be
a NASA engineer and his
memoir of the bumpy
ride.
368 pages
IDENTICAL STRANGERS: A MEMOIR OF TWINS
SEPARATED & REUNITED BY ELYSE SCHEIN
Elyse had always known
she was adopted, but it
wasn't until her midthirties that she searched
for her biological mother.
She was not prepared for
the life-changing news: she
had an identical
twin sister.
270 pages
WILD: FROM LOST TO FOUND ON THE PACIFIC
CREST TRAIL BY CHERYL STRAYED
Facing down rattlesnakes &
black bears, intense heat &
snowfalls, beauty &
loneliness, Strayed pieces
her life back together again.
315 pages
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
MALCOLM X BY MALCOLM X
If there was any one man who
articulated the anger, the
struggle, and the beliefs of
African Americans in the 1960s,
that man was Malcolm X. His
“Autobiography” is the result of a
unique collaboration between
Alex Haley and Malcolm X,
whose voice and philosophy
resonate from every page, just as
His experience and his
intelligence continue to speak to
millions. 500 pages
SOUL ON ICE
BY ELDRIDGE CLEAVER
“By turns shocking and lyrical,
unblinking and raw, the searingly
honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver
are a testament to his unique place in
American history. Cleaver writes
in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware
that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro,
that I've been a rapist, and that I have
a Higher Uneducation." What
Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this
now classic autobiography, is how
much he was a man.”
242 pages
BLACK LIKE ME
BY JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN
“In 1959, Griffin headed to
New Orleans, darkened his
skin and immersed himself
in black society, then
traveled to several states
until he could no longer
stand the racism,
segregation and degrading
living conditions.”
200 pages
THE WOMAN WARRIOR: MEMOIRS
OF A GIRLHOOD AMONG GHOSTS
BY MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
“A fiercely honest
autobiography of growing up
Chinese-American in
California chronicles
Kingston's struggle to
balance the “ghosts'' of her
Chinese tradition with her
new American values.”
209 pages
HOLE IN MY LIFE BY JACK GANTOS
Just 20 years old, Gantos was in a
medium security prison for his
participation in a get rich-quick
drug scam. Scared silly by the
violence he saw around him daily,
Gantos's only lifeline was a battered
copy of The Brothers Karamazov,
which he painstakingly turned into
an impromptu journal by scratching
his own thoughts into the tiny spaces
between the lines.
200 pages
THIS BOY’S LIFE BY TOBIAS WOLFF
“His experiences are at once poignant
and comical, and Wolff does a
masterful job of re-creating the
frustrations and cruelties of
adolescence. His various schemes –
running away to Alaska, forging
checks, and stealing cars - lead
eventually to an act of outrageous
self-invention that releases him
into a new world of possibility.”
288 pages
COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI BY ANNE
MOODY
The story of a black girl growing
up in the desperate poverty of
rural Mississippi….To read her
book is to know
what it is to have grown up black
in Mississippi in the forties and
fifties -- and to have survived
with pride and courage intact. In
this now classic autobiography,
She details the sights, smells, and
suffering of growing up in a racist
society and candidly reveals the
soul of a black girl who had the
courage to challenge it.
384 pages
MEN WE REAPED BY JESMYN WARD
Jesmyn Wardwrites of the deaths of 5 young
men in her life. “The cause of each death
was different, but she sees them all as
connected to being poor and black in the
rural South: Her younger brother, Joshua,
was 19 when he was killed by a drunken
driver who smashed into his car…Over the
next 4 years, her friend Demond was
murdered after agreeing to testify against
the alleged shooter in a drug-related case;
another friend committed suicide; a third
died of a heart attack at 23, probably
brought on by cocaine & other drugs; & her
cousin was killed when his car collided
with a train on the tracks.
256 pages
THE BONE LADY: LIFE AS A FORENSIC
ANTHROPOLOGIST BY MARY MANHEIN
When a skeleton is all that's
left to tell the story of a crime, Mary H.
Manhein, otherwise known as "the
bone lady," is called in. For almost
two decades, Manhein has used her
expertise in forensic pathology to
help law enforcement agents--locally,
nationally, and internationally--solve
their most perplexing mysteries.
137 pages
ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT BY
STEPHEN KING
The author shares his
insights into the craft of
writing and offers a
humorous perspective on
his own experience as a
writer.
291 pages
A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF
STAGGERING GENIUS BY DAVE EGGERS
A compelling voice for
Generation X, Eggers here
recounts his early 20s,
caring for his younger
brother after their parents'
unexpected deaths and his
endeavors in a variety of
media.
437 pages