The Best Memoirs You've Never Read | Book Recommendations

Hi guys, Olive here. Here today to recommend you 10 fantastic memoirs. Memoir is a very popular sub-genre of non-fiction. It's actually a really good place to start with non-fiction if you normally don't read any non-fiction books. It's a person opening up, telling a portion of their life story and really being vulnerable with the reader of the book. It's really no surprise that memoirs really appeal to people who read primarily fiction books. I think it's very likely that you've at least heard of some of the very popular memoirs out there and you may have even read them already. I'm talking about books like Educated by Tara Westover, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Laurie Gottlieb, and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kolonathy. I loved all three of those memoirs. I can also recommend those, but in today's video I really want to shine a spotlight on some memoirs that I think it's possible you've never even heard of. These are books that definitely flew more under the radar, but they're ones that I really enjoyed, I really connected with, and they're ones that I think deserve more love. The first book I want to give a shout out to in this video is actually a newer release and so it technically hasn't flown under the radar just yet, but unfortunately since it's being put out by a university press I think there's a high likelihood of it not receiving the hype that I truly think it should get. It's called I've Had to Think Up The author of this book is a Dolly Parton super fan. She refers to herself as a Dolly-ologist and throughout this memoir she not only recounts the difficult experiences in her own past, but she discusses a lot of Dolly Parton's life and career, and it turns out that a lot of things that the author went through are comparable to things that Dolly herself experienced, talked about publicly, or processed through her music. This book is a memoir so of course the author is telling her own story in it, but because this author has been so profoundly affected by everything that Dolly is and everything she's done over the years, it is simultaneously a celebration of the life and artistry of Dolly Parton, and appropriately enough it is full of the essence of Dolly. It has her but also her vulnerability and her giving heart. If you are a fan of Dolly Parton, you will love this book, and even if you're not a fan of Dolly Parton, this book will turn you into one. And like a lot of other memoirs that I listen to in audiobook, I can definitely recommend this one because it is narrated by the author herself. But let's shift from music to nature because I can also 100% recommend Saving Jemima, Life and Love with a Hard Luck J by Julie Zikfus. This is the story of how the author, who has wildlife rehabilitation experience, took in an orphaned baby blue jay who she named Jemima. She raised this baby blue jay and got her ready to be released back into the wild. Just in case you didn't know this, blue jays are members of the corvid family, meaning that they're related to crows, magpies, ravens. If you know anything about this family of birds, you'll know that they're some of the most intelligent birds out there. And therefore, Jemima got herself into her fair share of mischief while living inside of Julie's house. But that intelligence actually really came in handy as Jemima re-entered the wild under the watchful eye of the author. The relationship that develops between Julie Zikfus and Jemima is absolutely beautiful. It definitely tugs on your heartstrings as Julie is getting ready to say goodbye to Jemima. But the whole process of taking care of this little bird helped Julie first distract herself and then deal with some really hard things that she was going through at the time. I think if you're a bird lover like me, you will not want to miss this book. But I think you could fall in love with this book regardless of whether or not you're a bird nerd. And I also need to mention that this book is gorgeous just as a physical object. It is full of photographs that the author took as she was raising Jemima, and it's full of her magnificent artwork. Another memoir I was deeply touched by is a book called Our Last Season, A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship by Harvey Ayrton. The author of this book is a sports journalist. He covered the New York Knicks, the basketball team for many years. And as he was up and coming as a journalist, he developed a friendship with a very unlikely New York Knicks super fan. She was a single working mother named Michelle, and she just so happened to have some primo season ticket seats right behind the New York Knicks' bench. She could hear everything that they were saying. So she always had a scoop for the author in his younger years. Over the years, they developed a very deep friendship, an almost mother and son type of relationship that lasted up until her death in 2018. This book is the story of that amazing friendship. And of course, it involves a lot of basketball, since that's the thing that they bonded over in the first place. This book is sweet. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. Sports fan or not, this book will steal your heart. The next memoir that I would like to recommend is actually another one that blends the personal and the professional. It's called Rust, a Memoir of Steel and Grit by Elise Collette Goldbach. This book tells the story of how the author accepted a job at the steel mill in her Ohio hometown, an extremely dangerous but very well-paying job that made demands on her physically, mentally, and emotionally. As she was trying to manage this job, she was also working really hard to keep her bipolar disorder under control. She was afraid that if she let it get out of control as it had in the past, that she would lose the relationship that she was in that she deeply valued. I found this book to be fascinating, hearing what it was like working inside of the steel mill, but also deeply personal because the author talks a lot about past trauma and of course her struggles with mental illness. If you like your memoirs multi-dimensional, you may want to give this one a try. The next memoir I want to recommend actually focuses on the author's hobby rather than their job. The one I'm thinking of is called Liquid Gold, Bees and the Pursuit of Midlife Honey by Roger Morgan Grenfell. In this book, the author tells his story of taking up beekeeping as a and all the trials and tribulations that came along with that choice. To be even half decent at keeping bees, the author first had to learn a lot about the bees themselves, which I'm very happy to report is information that he passes along to us as readers, so you can expect to learn a lot about bees as you read through this book. But as the author found out, this pastime has a lot of sticky sweet rewards in the form of honey, but also has the potential for heartbreak in the form of the loss of hives. The author takes us through the entire experience with a lot of honesty and a great sense of humor. But a more solemn, a more lyrical book that I would like to recommend is called The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Ko. This is a very unique memoir in terms of its It's about how when the author was just a young teenager living in California, her parents decided to repatriate to South Korea, leaving her and her brother behind. I say the structure of this one is unique because there are many passages in this book in which the author is describing what that time in her young life was like and the effect it had on her as she moved But the dividing lines between those sections are these letters that she received from her mother during those years that the author herself translates from Korean into English. And in those letters, you can see that her mother is kind of trying to parent her from afar to try to bring the two closer together, even though they were so physically disconnected from one another. As I said, this one does lean toward the melancholy side, but it is a really fascinating look at the bonds between mothers and daughters. But another troubled mother-daughter relationship is examined in my next recommendation as well. That book is called Brace for Impact by Gabe Montessanti. In this book, the author talks about how she joined a roller derby league in St. Louis, Missouri, and how it helped her finally find some semblance of peace with her body image, her sexuality, and her complicated relationship with her mother. I think if you enjoyed as much as you can enjoy Jeanette McCurdy's tremendously popular memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, this one would be a good follow-up read. Plus it has the roller derby element, which is so much fun. This book has lingered in my mind in the best possible way. I definitely think it's worth a read. From one set of wheels to a different set of wheels, I also suggest you read Bicycling with Butterflies by Sarah Dyckman. This is by a wildlife biologist who followed the monarch butterfly migration from where they overwinter down in Mexico all the way up to Canada, and then the whole way back again, all on her bicycle. At its heart, this book is an adventure story. The author talks a lot about the challenges that she faced during this long journey, but also she's a wildlife biologist, so of course she mixes in a lot of information about the insects, how they're currently doing, how they're being affected by things like climate change and human behavior. She tells us the different things that we can do to help them. This is a very sprightly, a very passionate book, and I think it will especially appeal to you if you have a thing for these gorgeous orange and black butterflies. Another fascinating memoir that really puts you in the author's shoes is Corrections in Ink by Kerry Blakinger. This is the story of how the author, who was once a competitive figure skater, landed in prison for drug possession. All of a sudden, she had to learn how to navigate the brutal world inside those walls that operated entirely under its own twisted logic. It could be considered a cautionary tale, but more than anything, it's just illuminating because the author uses her considerable writing talents to talk about what it was like to go through everything she's gone through, to talk about what conditions are really like for prisoners, and since being released, she has used her writing skills to try to help improve conditions for people who are still serving time. So yes, this one is gut-wrenching, but it is also inspiring. And finally, the last recommendation I have for you today advertises itself as an essay collection, but I definitely think this book is a memoir in essays. It's called The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater by Alana Oken, and in this book, the author talks about her love of, and her long history with, crafting, how her grandmother taught her to knit when she was just a young girl, and how much she has adored making things ever since. In these essays, the author talks about how crafting helps with her anxiety, how it helps strengthen bonds between her and loved ones because she can give them her creations as gifts, and also how the act of crafting keeps the link between her and her beloved grandmother strong. This book is so sweet, it is so moving. If you're a crafter yourself, or if you really enjoyed the actress Sutton Foster's memoir, which was called Hooked, I urge you to give this one a read. So those are 10 must-read memoirs that you may have never even heard of before, unless you're an active viewer of my booktube channel, in which case you may have heard me rave about at least one of these in a video before, but I think all 10 of these are infinitely worth your time. I've linked all of them in the description box below for your clicking convenience. I've also discussed a lot of these books in either videos of mine that I've done in the past, or written reviews since I'm a freelance reviewer, so I will also link other places I've spoken about some of these books in the description box as well in case you're interested. If you're on a mobile device, just tap the title of this video and that will expand for you. Also at the bottom of that exact same description box, you'll find links to everywhere you can find me around the internets, like Goodreads and Instagram, the two places where I'm the most active, in case you would like to keep up with what I am reading and writing about right now. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you're having a wonderful day. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.