5 Must Read Memoirs

I wasn't able to post on my non-fiction saturday yesterday. I will more than make up for it today; five great memoirs in one post. Mind blowing, right? So I'll put it in the order I read them. Here we go.

 

1. Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of A Preacher's Daughter by Elizabeth Hancock.

Growing up Southern and Baptist in Eastern Kentucky, Elizabeth Hancock's world revolved around Sunday School, foreign missions projects, revival meetings and of course, the Kentucky Wildcats, who "glorified God through their goal-shattering, soul-shattering play." Hancock chronicles her childhood misadventures with sardonic wit, detailing her and her sister Meg's mischievous - if harmless - abuses of power (stealing Guess jeans from the Africa donation box, or hawking backyard swimming pool baptisms during her neighborhood's annual yard sale) and lovingly recalling the wisdom imparted by her long-suffering parents as they ministered to their unruly flock.

RED'S ALL STAR REVIEW: 3 out of 5 stars. -- Click here! to buy this book.

2. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.

True story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull an electroshock- therapy machine could provide entertainment.

RED'S ALL STAR REVIEW: 4 out of 5 stars. Very funny. -- Click here! to buy this book.



3. Five Men Who Broke My Heart by Susan Shapiro.

A successful freelance writer living in Manhattan, Susan Shapiro was in the midst of a midlife crisis she called her "no book summer." Married for five years, she was beginning to wonder if she'd remain bookless forever. Then the phone rang, and it was Brad, a college flame who'd become a Harvard scientist with a book coming out. Susan offers to interview him, and she winds up launching into all the intense, invasive questions she'd always wanted to ask him, and he answers them. This ignites a spark that sends her on a cross-country jaunt back through her lust-littered past. Yet somewhere between the tantalizing what-ifs and bittersweet might-have-beens, she finds what she's been searching for all along.

RED'S ALL STAR REVIEW: 3 3/4 out of 5 stars. -- Click here! to buy this book.


4. Zamba: The True Story of the Greatest Lion That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer.
When Ralph Helfer first began working, he was shocked by the cruelty that was accepted practice in the field of animal behaviorism. He firmly believed that love, not fear, should be the basis of any animal's development, even when dealing with the most dangerous of creatures. Then Zamba came into his life, an adorable four-month-old lion cub. Over the next eighteen years, Zamba would thrive and grow, and go on to star in numerous motion pictures and television shows, all the while developing a deep and powerful bond of love and affection with the man who raised him.

RED'S ALL STAR REVIEW: 3 out of 5 stars. -- Click here! to buy this book.

5. Waiting For Snow In Havana: Confessions Of A Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire.

The Cuba of Carlos’s youth becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smokin guerrilla named Fidel Castro come to power in 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos's friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. The memories of Carlos's life in Havana are cut short when he was just eleven years old, In 1962, when he became one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba—exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by the revolution.

RED' S ALL STAR REVIEW: 4 1/4 out of 5 stars. I loved this book! -- Click here! to buy this book.