I absolutely love to read. It’s really the only thing I ever do to relax…it’s MY time. Either in bed, when the house is quiet and still…or my favorite– in a hot bath (except I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed this luxury.) I always have loved to read although my tastes in reading material have changed through the years. The Boxcar Children series was my favorite as a child, I loved The Secret Garden, Beezus and Ramona (another series by Beverly Cleary), then Judy Blume as a preteen: Who could forget Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? And then of course the JUICY saga of Michael and Catherine (smut for kids aka Forever). I think the reading fell off a bit during the highschool, college years…who had time what with all that studying!
After college, as I’ve told you before, I became obsessed with True Crime. No idea why, especially since I lived alone, a long way from home…but I couldn’t get enough. I read every gory true tale every written, until one day I couldn’t turn the next page. Just like that. Climbed aboard the true crime wagon…
But I knew I liked the true stuff. I had no time for stories that weren’t real…not plausible. So I switched to biographies. Those of the serious sort…Ann Sexton, Sylivia Plath. Geez, these women needed Prozac, no? A better option than the gas oven. Oh well. But eventually I came across a slightly more modern day biography…Edie. And I was hooked. This book was about the heady, 60′s, drug-fueled life of Edie Sedgewick, muse of Andy Warhol. I loved this book. Only a handful of books that I’ve read as an “adult” (this is subjective folks) make my true favorites list, and this is one of them. And I just finished another (#6 below) which is what made me think to write this post. So I’ll list them, and if you love to read like me, maybe you’ll find one to add to your list of faves.
1. All-Time Favorite: The Liar’s Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr
Overview: When it was published in 1995, Mary Karrs “The Liars Club” took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, as well as bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karrs comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salingersa hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. Now with a new introduction that discusses her memoirs impact on her family, this unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as funny, lively, and un-put-downable (“USA Today”) today as it ever was.
2. Edie: American Girl, Jean Stein
Overview: When Edie was first published a decade ago, it quickly became an international bestseller. In the sixties Edie Sedgwick exploded into the public eye like a comet–aristocratic, glamorous, and Andy Warhol’s superstar. Then at 28 her light fizzled and died from a drug overdose. Alternately thrilling, tragic and horrifying, this book shatters many myths about the American sixties. Photographs.
3. All Over But the Shoutin’: Rick Bragg
Overview: A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times recounts growing up in the Alabama hills, the son of a violent veteran and a mother who tried to insulate her children from poverty and ignorance.
4. A Million Little Pieces: James Frey
Overview: “The most lacerating tale of drug addiction since William S. Burroughs’ Junky.” —The Boston Globe“Again and again, the book delivers recollections that leave the reader winded and unsteady. James Frey’s staggering recovery memoir could well be seen as the final word on the topic.”—San Francisco Chronicle“A brutal, beautifully written memoir.”—The Denver Post“Gripping . . . A great story . . . You can’t help but cheer his victory.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
note: this books reputation was severely tarnished when it was revealed (on Oprah, no less) that many parts of the book are “embellished”. But it’s still a great read.
5. A Girl Named Zippy, Haven Kimmel
Overview: When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed “Zippy” for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period–people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards. Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel’s straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds Zippy.
5. Girl Interupted, Susanna Kaysen
Overview: At the age of eighteen Susanna Kaysen was committed to a psychiatric hospital by a doctor she had seen only once. For the next two years she lived on the ward for teenage girls at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric institution as reknowned for its celebrity patients — among them, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles — as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.Kaysen’s memoir encompasses the horror and the humor of the “parallel universe” she enters, using her razor-edged perception to present vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers in the keleidoscopically shifting landscape of the sixties. “Girl, Interrupted” is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
6. Miss American Pie, Margaret Sartor
Overview: A spellbinding and authentic document of American adolescence. Set against the backdrop of the deep South in the 1970s, “Miss American Pie” is the unforgettable account of Margaret Sartor’s life from age twelve to eighteen. A raw document crafted from diaries, notebooks, and letters, this deeply personal yet universally appealing story astonishes with its candor. Young Margaret moves with ease between the seemingly trivial concerns of hairstyles and boys to more profound questions of faith and meaning. By turns funny and poignant, heartbreaking and profound, she tackles all of the decade’s issues–desegregation, drugs, the sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and the spread of charismatic evangelical Christianity–with humor, frankness, and unexpected insight. “Miss American Pie” reminds us what it feels like to grow up, offering a true and honest look at a teenager grappling with the timeless questions of sex, friendship, God, love, loss, and the meaning of family. The introduction and epilogue, written by Sartor from an older perspective, reflect on those turbulent and life-shaping years, revealing how the girl in the diary turned out after all, and demonstrating that childhood–both its joys and traumas–reverberate deeply in our adult lives.
I LOVED this one! Since you know I have kept a journal every day since the third grade, I totally related to this one. Plus, it reminded me so perfectly of my own growing up.
I have also enjoyed the books by Augusten Burroughs, but these are quite irreverent (mom). Running with Scissors, Possible Side Effects, Dry, Magical thinking: True Stories and Sellevision. He’s just a funny, clever guy.
So maybe you’ve noticed that at least three of these books have been made into movies…but I read them BEFORE this happened…which should tell you that I possess at least a halfway decent good-book-dar. And you’re certainly thinking, wow, Kat is this scholarly, bookish, serious girl right? Ha. Okay, if you know me at all you’re laughing. And you also know that between books my reads of choice are People and Us Weekly. I said I liked the true stuff. right.
