Trending Biographies and Memoirs
I'm Glad My Mom Died (Released: January 2022)
Author(s): Jennette McCurdy
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.47 (1192 Ratings, 202 Reviews)
Pages: 313
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.
Genre(s): Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography & Autobiography, autobiography
Man's Search for Meaning (Released: January 1946)
Author(s): Viktor E. Frankl
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.23 (680 Ratings, 68 Reviews)
Pages: 240
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, Biography & Autobiography, Classics, Spirituality, Concentration camp inmates, Existential psychotherapy, History, General
Bossypants (Released: January 2011)
Author(s): Tina Fey (Author/Narrator)
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.82 (606 Ratings, 75 Reviews)
Pages: None
Spirited and whip-smart, these laugh-out-loud autobiographical essays are "a masterpiece" from the Emmy Award-winning actress and comedy writer known for 30 Rock, Mean Girls, and SNL" (Sunday Telegraph). Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true. At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've always suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy. Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, comedy
Crying in H Mart (Released: January 2021)
Author(s): Michelle Zauner
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.25 (502 Ratings, 91 Reviews)
Pages: 239
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Biography, Family & Relationships
Yes Please (Released: January 2014)
Author(s): Amy Poehler
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.79 (366 Ratings, 48 Reviews)
Pages: 329
Part memoir, part 'missive-from-the-middle', Yes Please is a hilarious collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, haikus and words-to-live-by drawn from the life and mind of acclaimed actress, writer and comedian Amy Poehler.
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Biography, Women
Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Released: January 2004)
Author(s): Elizabeth Gilbert
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.31 (362 Ratings, 24 Reviews)
Pages: 364
This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls "Anne Lamott's hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister") is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.
Genre(s): Large type books, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biography, Women, Bestseller New York Times Nonfiction, Self-Help, Adventure, Fiction
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (Released: January 2000)
Author(s): Anthony Bourdain
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.14 (330 Ratings, 39 Reviews)
Pages: None
A celebrity chef shares anecdotes of his experience in the restaurant industry, and of his journey from dishwasher to a position of fame in the food industry.
Genre(s): Nonfiction, History, Biography, Memoir, Cooking
The Woman in Me (Released: January 2023)
Author(s): Britney Spears
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.90 (298 Ratings, 66 Reviews)
Pages: 277
In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history. Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Biography
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Released: January 2012)
Author(s): Cheryl Strayed
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.88 (337 Ratings, 62 Reviews)
Pages: 338
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Genre(s): Adventure, General, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography & Autobiography, Travel
The Anthropocene Reviewed (Released: August 2019)
Author(s): John Green
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.35 (314 Ratings, 62 Reviews)
Pages: 305
Traditional Chinese edition of The Anthropocene Reviewed
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Essays, Biography, Memoir