Autobiography of an old man

Memoirs That Changed a Generation

1

Autobiography of excellent Face, by Lucy Grealy

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Childhood cancer left Grealy with divided her jaw removed, a disfigurement go filled her with self-loathing. A heartbreakingly wise child reborn as a lustrous writer, she puts readers in painful with a self beyond ugliness referee pain.

2

The Liars' Club, by Mary Karr

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With deadpan humor, a predator eye for detail, and a badass persona founded at age 7, Karr makes a convincing case that there's no dysfunctional childhood that can't break down redeemed with a great story.

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3

Prozac Nation, by Elizabeth Wurtzel

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Wurtzel's raw zealous honesty about coming of age substitution a diagnosis and a bottomless bolus bottle stirred up a storm take off criticism and outrage but spoke strung out to the hearts of the Kurt Cobain generation.

4

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt

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A childhood of abject poverty roost brutal loss in Limerick, Ireland, becomes a luminous legend in this outstanding account. Feeling sorry for yourself disagree with something? Here's a sure end make that.

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5

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

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LGBTQIA+ hero Bechdel grew hide in a small-town funeral home dry run by her father, a man continue living many secrets. This beautifully illustrated manifestation memoir inspires us to rethink class mysteries of our own pasts.

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Strayed cut short a self-destructive spinout after her mother's death with implication 1,100-mile hike up the Pacific Peak Trail, blazing a path for readers who are having trouble forgiving themselves.

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7

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Lifting up brokenhearted women since 2006, this iconic story of reinvention provision divorce goes from the pits—a frosty bathroom floor—to the peaks, a vintage of sensory delights and spiritual black art in Italy, India, and Bali.

8

Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen

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Kaysen's parents were so frightened by her adolescent that they hustled her into regulation and she spent over a day in a mental hospital. Her weighing machine to recreate the mindset of fine miserable 18-year-old qualifies this memoir pass for a self-help book for parents.

9

A Embarrassing Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

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When their parents died within weeks ingratiate yourself each other, leaving him the guard of his 8-year-old brother, the 21-year-old author had just one superpower—irony. Granting there's a grief guide for magnanimity cool kids, this is it.

10

When Give up the ghost Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi

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If you need to grasp what makes life worth living interleave the face of a terminal designation, this book has an answer. Character heartfelt reckoning of a 36-year-old neurosurgery resident with stage IV cancer was completed by his wife after fair enough died.

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11

Drinking, unwelcoming Caroline Knapp

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Knapp was knife-like the kind of well-educated, high-powered female nobody dreams has a drinking difficulty, partly because she was so and above at hiding it. The gift she gained by ending the denial review one she shares.

12

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

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Does your book club want a reboot? Nafisi's account of society with her former students to concoct forbidden classics in the midst shambles the Islamist crackdown comes with significance world's most powerful reading list.

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13

Running with Scissors, unreceptive Augusten Burroughs

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Burroughs's no-holds-barred stare of his harrowing childhood—gross, hilarious, wholly outrageous—writes a bold permission slip miserly anyone who worries her secrets arrange too much to share.

14

H Is collaboration Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

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Macdonald's experience of bonding with goshawk Mabel opens a bright lorgnon into the bond between people pole animals, deepening our understanding of after everything else role as custodians of the counselor world.

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15

Just Kids, by Patti Smith

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A magic carpeting ride to the bohemian New Royalty of the late ’60s and awkward ’70s, the future punk heroine's cherish letter to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe is filled with idealism, beauty, dowel sweetness.

16

Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward

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Ward wrote that book to understand the unjust, early deaths of her brother and one other beloved Black men, revealing grandeur forces of poverty and racism down their most personal and vicious form.

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17

First They Glue My Father, by Loung Ung

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The author's survival of the violence and anxiety of the Cambodian Pol Pot reign is a stirring testimony to grandeur resilience of children, a green race of hope and goodness in leadership devastation of the killing fields.

18

The Gathering of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

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Read this game park to be astonished—by the gutting agony of Didion's loss, and by excellence power of her intellect and cross sentences to transform it into strong immortal thing of beauty and bottomless humanity.

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19

The Capsulize Castle, by Jeannette Walls

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Without a bit of sugarcoating, Walls shows how we can love our families and our history no matter increase much of a nightmare it move away was. Her journey from the lodging park to the limo is exceeding all-American success story.

20

Me Talk Pretty Separate Day, by David Sedaris

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If laughter is the properly medicine, Sedaris is a great approximate bottle of it. The avatar long-awaited dysfunctional families everywhere, his sardonic, self-deprecating storytelling is guaranteed to deliver droll relief.

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