Memoirs in the Media

Check out these memoirs that were recently featured in the media!

Loving Natalee: a Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith by Beth Holloway with Sunny Tillman

The author describes her reaction to the disappearance of her daughter, Natalee, in Aruba during a high school class trip, the search for Natalee, and the hope and faith that have sustained her during her daughter's continued disappearance. (Publisher Summary)

My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today by Nora Pouillon; with Laura Fraser

Spanning the last 40 years of our culinary history, the natural foods pioneer and founder of Restaurant Nora, America's first certified organic restaurant, shares her mission, after moving to the United States in the 1960s, to change our relationship with what we eat by bringing organic foods to the American table. (Publisher Summary)

Primates of Park Avenue: a Memoir by Wednesday Martin, Ph.D. The author, a professional anthropologist, compares the behavior of the wealthy mothers of the Upper East Side in New York City that she lived among to primate social behavior, with its rules and rituals about dominance, display, hierarchy, mating practices, physical adornment, and anxiety. (Publisher Summary)

Rock Memoirs

Rock history is littered with juicy memoirs.  Check out some of the best rock memoirs of all time available right here at your Community Library.

• Late, Late At Night, Rick Springfield's autobiography, takes readers inside his successful life as a pop star and actor to reveal his battle with depression and insecurity.

• Steven Tyler tells what it's like to be a living legend and the front man of one of the world's biggest bands including a look at the debauchery, the money, and the rehab that goes with it in the Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?

• For almost fifty years, Gregg Allman has been a rock legend and in My Cross to Bear, he does not hold back in describing his life from the Allman Brothers Band, to his life with Cher, to his struggles with drugs and alcohol.

Funniest Memoirs

Memoirs are one of the most frequently requested genres at the library.  When you're looking for a laugh, go to these hilarious memoirs!

• Dry by Augusten Burroughs: An advertising executive remembers his childhood with an eccentric foster family and his early adult experiences of trying to forge an independent life for himself.

• Bossypants by Tina Fey: The breakout star of Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock gives a humorous account of her life as well as behind the scenes stories from her hit shows.

• Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanna Darst: A memoir of having grown up in an eccentric family of faded wealth and gentility in which the father's faded dreams of being a famous writer puts his family in the poor house.

• Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher: Based on Fisher's one woman show, this memoir covers growing up with celebrity parents, her early success in Star Wars, her battle with addiction and mental illness, turbulent romances, being a single mother, and her struggle for recovery and healing.

• Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson: A memoir of growing up in rural Texas, awkward high school years, and the author's relationship with her long suffering husband.

Guy Reads: West by West

Basketball fans who consider Jerry West a legend will be surprised to learn that at the end of the day he is simply a man carrying around a lot of baggage.  His brutally candid autobiography, West by West: My Charmed Tormented Life, discusses not only his glowing achievements but also lower points including physical abuse as a child, the death of his beloved brother, and West's struggle with clinical depression.  The intertwined brilliance and agony that is Jerry West's life is a powerful narrative that will draw fans in from the first page.

What to Read After Cheryl Strayed's Wild

If you loved reading about Cheryl Strayed's 1100 mile solo trek through the wilderness in Wild: From lost to found on the Pacific Coast Trail, then check out these titles:

• Into the Wild by John Krakauer tells the tragic story of Chris McCandleless who cut off all contact with his family and headed into the Alaskan wilderness.  Be forewarned, this story does not have the happy ending that Wild does but it is riveting and was turned into a movie directed by Sean Penn.

• Once Upon a River: a novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, is set in the 1970s and tells the story of a troubled teenager who takes her family's boat and sails Michigan's Stark River guided only by an address on a scrap of paper and a belief in Annie Oakley.

• Claiming Ground by Laura Bell is a memoir of Bell's time in the 1970s when she worked as a sheep herder on a Wyoming ranch.  Surrounded by the vastness of land and the company of mainly alcoholic men, Bell's life during that time period was marked by periods of isolation that she reflects on many years later from the perspective of a wife and mother.

New memoir: 'Gypsy Boy' by Mikey Walsh

Here's a new memoir that got a starred review in Library Journal: Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh. Walsh, the son of a Romany Gypsy champion bareknuckle boxer, shares the story of his upbringing in England, his realization of his sexual orientation, and how his circumstances were shaped by his culture's absolute beliefs.  A good bet for fans of dysfunction memoirs and LGBTQ themes.

Military Memoirs at MMSCL

American Sniper, Seal Team 6 - these are just two of the many highly-requested military memoirs available at Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library.  Speculating on the genre's popularity, this article from the New York Times explains that with the wars in the Middle East winding down, many are interested in reading about soldiers' firsthand experiences.  If you're one of the many people interested in tales of bravery and heroism, stop by your Community Library to check out a military memoir today!

'The Wolf of Wall Street' Book to Movie Alert

Jordan Belfort's 2007 memoir The Wolf of Wall Street is being turned into a movie directed by Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, Shelf Awareness reports.  Scorsese and DiCaprio have teamed up on a number of films in the past, including Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and Shutter Island, and now look forward to telling the story of the man who describes himself as a "stock market multimillionare at 26 [and] federal convict at 36" who "barely survived [his] rise and fall as an American entrepreneurial icon."  Terence Winter, the executive producer of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, is the scriptwriter.  Beat the rush to the library - check out this book before the movie version hits theaters!

Wit and Wisdom from Princess Leia, Kelly Kapoor, and Bill Cosby

If you're looking for a few good laughs, try these three new releases:

1. Is everyone hanging out without me? by Mindy Kaling - The writer and actress best known as Kelly Kapoor on "The Office" shares observations on topics ranging from favorite male archetypes and her hatred of dieting to her relationship with her mother and the haphazard creative process in the "Office" writers' room.
2. Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher - In a book infused with her trademark incisive wit, the author of Wishful Drinking takes readers on a rollicking, behind the scenes tour of the Star Wars phenomenon.
3. I didn't ask to be born (but I'm glad I was) by Bill Cosby - In his first humor book since Cosbyology the legendary entertainer and funnyman provides insights on life including how to handle a teenage daughter who refuses to clean her room and a discussion of his antique bible collection.

Grief and a mother's guilt in Didion's touching new memoir

Celebrated author Joan Didion has released a new memoir brimming with emotion. In Blue Nights, Didion "reflects on her grief about her daughter's death, her guilt about her choices as a mother, and her fear of mortality," according to Goodreads, which has named this book a "Mover and Shaker" for the month of November.  Didion's 2005 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, won the the National Book Award in nonfiction and is also worth checking out.  Keep your tissues handy!

We Bought A Zoo: Book to Movie

Another book is making the jump to the silver screen: We Bought A Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed their Lives Forever.  In a real-life version of the classic TV series "Green Acres," a former British newspaper columnist tells how he uprooted his family to the English countryside and purchased a dilapidated zoo, which he planned to refurbish and reopen as a family business.  However, a lack of money, skeptical staff, family tension, and his wife's devastating illness complicated his plans.  If you enjoy uplifting stories about animals, escaping the corporate world, and the healing power of hope, check this book out before the movie (premiering December 23) makes it much harder to get yours hands on.

Big Dead Place: Antarctic Memoir Inspires New TV Series

Ever wonder what it would be like to live on Earth's coldest, driest, most inhospitable continent?  If so, you might have already read the 2005 memoir Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica, in which author Nicholas Johnson shares his experiences living and working at McMurdo Research Station, one of the few human outposts in that frozen land.  Now, Deadline reports that Johnson's thrilling true story is being turned into a comedic drama by HBO, with James Gandolfini as the producer and possibly the star.  Interested?  Request your copy today!

Child Abuse in Truth and Fiction

Books that deal with heavy topics such as child abuse are often among the most popular, explaining the enduring success of A Child Called "It", a victim's memoir published in 1995. Stitches, a memoir in graphic format, tells of the author's traumatic childhood in which his radiologist father tormented him until the author ran away at the age of 16. The Martian Child, also a true story, is slightly more uplifting, telling the inspirational story of a single man who adopts an abused child. The recently published fictional title Room, which tells the story of an abused son who is raised in a closet-sized room, is so popular that the library had to purchase seven copies (plus a few in large print and audio) to keep up with the demand. And the library's copy of You Don't Know Me, the fictional story of a 14 year old boy's abuse at the hands of his stepfather was last checked out mere days ago, despite the fact that it has been a full decade since it was published. For more stories on this heavy topic, search the keywords "child abuse" or "abused children" in your Community Library's catalog.

127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The memoir 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston is coming soon to Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library as a movie. Both book and movie tell the story of a near-fatal accident that traps a mountaineer under a boulder in Utah, where he endures five days in extreme conditions before effecting his own rescue. Watch Dateline NBC on Sunday for an interview with Aron Ralston about the story. Interested in more true accounts of mountain climbing? Try Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by John Krakauer.

Celebrate Veterans Day with memoirs from past Commanders-in-Chief

It's Veterans Day! Here are two recently-published memoirs of past Commanders-in-Chief that offer some great reading to celebrate this holiday. Talk to the Reader's Advisory Librarian (at the desk in the fiction section) for more great suggestions, and please post some suggestions of your own!

Bush, G.W. (2010) Decision Points

Publisher summary: The author offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life and presidency, discussing the hotly contested 2000 election, 9/11, the Iraq war and his controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan and Iran, as well as his decision to quit drinking, discovery of faith and relationship with his family.

Carter, J. (2010) White House Diary

Publisher summary: During his years in the White House, President Jimmy Carter kept a diary filled with insights into his presidency, his relationship with friends and foes and his lasting impact on issues that are still important today, and now the diary is available to the public for the first time, with the best entries selected by Carter himself and complemented by his candid reflections.