I've just finished Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs which my mother passed on to me. I'm surprised she finished it since I would have expected her to toss it in the garbage with the first sentence of the chapter entitled "The Joy of Sex (Pre-Teen Edition)". I'm not sure how much of it I belive, but it certainly contradicts the assumption that an abused dysfunctional childhood necessarily ruins one's entire life.

Speaking of my mother, her favorite memoir is Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King.

cjoseph, I'll go along with your Mother, the Florenece King book is very funny and here and there wonderfully rude for something written by an American.

Are you familiar with the Australian writer Clive James, in the US? His series of Unreliable Memoirs are quite fun.

I enjoyed Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon and how about possibly the first and totally fictitious Fanny Hill. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure?

I really liked Rumer Godden's memoir: "A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep" (interesting descriptions of her unusual life in India).

One of my favorite memoirs is Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast." (the title refers to Paris, the moveable feast, where he lived in the Twenties with his first wife, Hadley, and knew Fitzgerald, Stein, and other writers)

Some of my favorites, off the top of my head (I reserve the right to add more later when I can look at my bookshelves :))are:

Rain or Shine - Cyra McFadden
Liars' Club - Mary Karr
Blood Washes Blood - can't remember author's name, but a cross between a personal memoir, a family memoir, and a search for the truth about a Sicilian bandit ancestor. Very interesting.
The Glass Castle
Jesus Land
Twenty Years A Growin - by a man who grew up in the Blaskets in the early 1900s. Written in the Gaelic and translated in the 1920s. Lovely, lovely.

Thank you, laceyvail, for mentioning McFadden's Rain or Shine! I had forgotten both the title and the author, so for years I've been asking around: Does anyone remember a memoir by a woman whose father was famous rodeo announcer and her mother was a trick rider? No one ever responded; but now you've handed me both without my asking. *big happy smile* I remember parts of R or S being an absolute screaming delight, especially when the bossy aunt got her comeuppance. It was equally poignant in parts -- and wonderfully written in all parts.

I've also read Blood Washes Blood and agree that it is "very interesting."

When you get the chance, please tell us who wrote Twenty Years a Growin (I can't find it at Amazon). I read Cole Moreton's Hungry for Home: Leaving the Blaskets: A Journey from the Edge of Ireland, and I've been fascinated with accounts of the "Western Isles" and ways of life that are gone forever, including John M. Synge's The Aran Isles.

I enjoyed Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves although it's been so long since I read it I can remember very little of it. I seem to recall that when it first came out it angered a number of people, and Graves took his more acerbic comments out of later editions.

Vee, I come across Clive James's name every once in a while, but I've only seen him on TV. I remember his interview of Roman Polanski where Polanski talks about his attraction to young girls. I seem to remember him in a food show where he and a cook tried to recreate ancient Roman fish sauce, but there's nothing on IMDb that looks like that, so maybe I'm confusing him with someone else.

friedag - Twenty Years A-Growing (note spelling correction) was written by Maurice O'Sullivan. I found my copy at a library sale. I also have Hungry for Home, and you will find Twenty Years... listed in the Bibliography. I hope you can find a copy--it's really lovely; the translation keeps the lilt of the Gaelic.

And I'm so glad I was able to help you with R or S. I really love that memoir too.

>Graves took his more acerbic comments out of later editions.

Thats too bad. Given the subject matter, the more acerbic comments the better.

Whats the difference between a memoir and an autobiography?

Woodnymph, I too loved Rumer Godden's autobio. Lovely.
In case any of you missed my riveting review elswhere around here somewhere I did read a sweet and funny memoir titled "Still Life With Chickens" by Catherine Goldhammer. Just happened on it at the library. Upon her separation from her husband she and her daughter and the chickens, of course, had to leave their rather upscale suburb and move to a small seaside town where flannel shirts were the height of fashion and live bait was sold in vending machines. They came to love their new life, I think the chickens did also.

I think the difference between a memoir and an autobiography is that an autobiography is more "cold hard facts" sort of book, usually chronolgical and encompassing all the person's life to that point. I think a memoir is more of an emotional and spiritual look at a person's life which may only encompass a portion of their life. But I also think there is a lot of overlapping between the two.

gbg