Best New Nonfiction of 2008

While Mary M. is accumulating the Best New Fiction that we’ve all read this year, how about thinking about some Best New Nonfiction?

So, out with it!  What were your favorite nonfiction books of 2008?

Here are my two favorites so far:  

Under a Flaming Sky:  The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 by Daniel James Brown.   Clearly written, well-reseached and beautifully personal story of the Hinckley fires.  It’s unbelievably absorbing. 

The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival by Stanley Alpert.  From the cover:  “On January 21, 1998, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan.  This is the story of what happened next . . .” Amazing memoir, unbelievably riveting and wonderfully written.  Impossible to put down.

Now you!  (Carol J.)

Fun Home – Amazing Read

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s illustrated tragicomic memoir Fun Home received a starred review in PW and has appeared on many Best of lists.  The title refers to the funeral home her family ran (she compares them to the Addams Family) and explores her relationships with her family, particularly her English teacher/funeral director/closeted gay man/historic restorationist father, with dark humor.  If you like the cartoons of Lynda Barry, memoirists like Augusten Burroughs or the essays of David Sedaris, you may also enjoy this book.

One of the most amazing and unusual aspects of this memoir, though, is the sheer scope of literary references.  (I love when a book comes with its own reading list.)  Both of her parents were English teachers, her mother was an amateur actress, and Alison herself turns to books when exploring her own sexuality. 

Here are just SOME of the books referenced in Fun Home:  Stones of Venice – Ruskin, Just So Stories - Kipling, Happy Death – Camus, Myth of Sisyphus – Camus, Sappho Was a Right-On Woman – Abbott, Sun Also Rises – Hemingway, The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald, Far Side of Paradise – Mizener, Washington Square – James, Taming of the Shrew – Shakespear, Word is Out – Adair, Well of Loneliness – Hall, Delta of Venus – Nin, Dream of a Common Language – Rich, World of Pooh – Milne, James and the Giant Peach – Dahl, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Zelda – Milford, Remembrance of Things Past – Proust, The Nude – Clark, The Worm Ouroboros – Eddison, American Dream – Albee, Mornings at Seven - Osborn, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care – Spock, The Trumpet of the Swan – White, Johnny Tremain – Forbes, The Wind in the Willows – Grahame, The Importance of being Earnest – Wilde, Waterfall – Drabble, And the Band Played On – Shilts, The Fellowship of the Ring – Tolkien, The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Joyce, Earthly Paradise – Colette, and, finally, Ulysses by James Joyce. 

WHEW!  And it’s not even a very long book.  (Carol J.)

So You Want to Write a Memoir

This week’s Entertainment Weekly included a great article by Kate Ward called So You Want to Write a Memoir, which provides a selective (but extensive) list of the memoirs published since 1995 (with the exception of celebrity memoirs). 

Divided into subjects (childhood, family history, loved ones, struggles, addictions, traumas, racial identity, religion, employment, foodstuff, travel, death, etc.) and with a capsule description of each, this is not only helpful if you want to write your own story (and want to make sure someone hasn’t trodden the same ground already) or read a new memoir, but it’s also helpful from a readers advisory standpoint, for those patrons who say, do you have that memoir?  You know the one?  With the woman?  Who did that thing?   Check it out.  It’s a great list! (Carol J.)

When the Story is True – part two

Speaking of non-fiction that reads like fiction, Carol Dahlquist, master book recommender, has a few new favorite non-fiction books to mention:  Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William P. Drennan, which is about the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin.  Another new nonfiction she recommends is Down the Nile: In a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney.  PW says: “This is travel writing at its most enjoyable: the reader is taken on a great trip with an erudite travel companion soaking up scads of history, culture and literary knowledge, along with the scenery.”  And for a little more local interest, she recommends The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl, a “thoughtful and elegant” (LJ) memoir of Hampl’s growing up in Saint Paul, and her relationship to her parents, told from the bedside of her dying mother.

Inquiring minds want to know:  What great nonfiction have you been reading lately?  Any recommendations?  (CLJ)

Not So True Life Stories

Fake Memoirs are all over the news lately.  The most recent memoir to be exposed as fiction is Love and Consequences by Margaret B. Jones, which has now been recalled by the publisher.  In this memoir, which got glowing reviews (including a starred Library Journal review), Jones claims to be half-Native American and raised by a foster family in L.A. gangland.  In truth, she’s white and was raised quite comfortably in a upper middle-class home. 

Scott Simon discussed fake memoirs  (like Jones and James Frey) on NPR’s Morning Edition this weekend and made a great point about why Jones and Frey would write fictional stories and claim them as memoir: writers get a break when they’re telling their own stories; that is, life is hard, but fiction is harder. 

For discussion:  What’s your favorite memoir – true or fake? (CLJ)