I have been doing some of the the Goodreads seasonal challenges this year and have ended up reading some excellent books I wouldn't necessarily have picked up without the challenges. But I've hit a bit of a block with the challenge called "Memorable Memoirs".
The challenge is to read a book from a list of popular memoirs from the last 10 years . And I'm having real trouble finding something that appeals there.
I will add a link to the list in the comments, as links are not allowed here. But it can also be found by searching for "Goodreads "Readers' 99 Most Popular Memoirs of the Past 10 Years"". If you see a little logo reading "2025 Reading challenge" you'll know you have the right one.
Anyway, what I really, really don't like are celebrity memoirs and what I call "intimate or misery memoirs" (e.g. "my memoir about grieving my abusive mother"), which knocks out quite a lot on the list.
The memoirs I've enjoyed are along the lines of "what it was like to do this interesting thing/job, or to live through this interesting experience". Recent ones I've enjoyed along those lines are:
- Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air – about being part of one of the expeditions involved the 1996 Mount Everest disaster
- When the Dust Settles, by Lucy Easthope – about working in disaster recovery
In both of these, the focus is a bit more on the experience, rather than on the impact on the person (although there is certainly some of that).
Out of the list, I've identified as potentials:
- Solito, by Javier Zamora – about a 9-year-old kid taking the dangerous trip from El Salvador to the US on his own. The problem with that is that I'm a Latin American immigrant myself (albeit not an immigrant to the US), and it may hit a bit too close to home right now.
- Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams: about working at Facebook. The thing with that one is that I don't particularly enjoy feeling outraged, and I already feel very negatively about Facebook, so do I really need to know the details?
Are there any others I should consider? Any you'd particularly recommend that may appeal to me? Thanks for any suggestions.
by feli468
4 Comments
Stanley Tucci’s Taste is good. It’s very light and has a lot of food talk and was written while he was filming Conclave. It’s not too “celeb memoir” – more like a yearlong diary of eating a drinking and hanging out with friends and family. Get it on audiobook if you can.
i read solito and i can recommend as a latin american. i also thoroughly enjoyed heavy by kiese laymon and how we fight for our lives by saeed jones. those two books were transformative to me.
**Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes** by Svante Pääbo. It’s memoir including scientific discoveries. I liked it. However, it’s 11 years old. So it doesn’t quite fit.
*Educated* by Tara Westover.
An extremely fascinating account of growing up on the fringes of society with parents that reject mainstream society, such as modern healthcare and education.
It’s definitely not a “woe is me, misery” memoir, I’d say she talks very fondly about some parts of her childhood, though other parts are definitely bleak. And then she talks about her experience of becoming educated as an adult.