Welcome to Memoiring

+ Vote for Our First Book Club Read

Hello! Welcome! And thank you the heaps of enthusiasm for reading memoir with me. Dozens of very nice peeps have joined the book club and taken the survey. Go you! Go us!

Your survey answers were super illuminating btw. Since about half of you wanted a say in what we read, we’ll start off that way. Below are a selection of memoirs that I’ve curated for us (aka wrung my hands over) to choose from. Instead of reaching for mother-daughter and mental health themes—which are my personal go-tos—I’ve tried to include a mix of all-stars across various sub-genres. And I’ve read tons of reviews to help inform these picks because, guess what, I haven’t read most of these.

That’s why I’m doing this Memoiring thing: so I can read more memoir!

Here’s a snap of my living room floor and a handful of amazing memoirs (all of which deserve a close read even if we don’t get to them immediately!). Also pictured, my sh*tty pedicure.

Before we get into selecting our first book, some of you told me you’re wary to join. You said your busy lives/demanding jobs/wild children/need to read fiction/need to rest in the fetal position, might not allow for this kind of book club commitment. If this is you, I get it! Please know you can jump in whenever there’s a book that speaks to you! You DO NOT need to read every single book, every single month. Sound good?

Speaking of, I’ll try to announce our memoir-of-the-month on the first of every month. We’ll have several weeks to buy or borrow the book and read it before we convene in some virtual way. More on that in a future email.

Now, without further ado, check out our Memoir-A-Month Book Club picks!

Wow, there are so many great memoirs (and sheesh, do I need a designer to crop these better!)

Is every form of memoir covered here? No! Can we change that as we go? Yes!

How about we add some memoirs in essays? Memoir-plus with journalistic reporting? Memoir in translation? Books that are considered the OG of the genre? Yes, yes, oui, and yes!

In the meantime, please vote on which of these books you’d like to start with by reading up on them on my Bookshop.org page. (This is a great place to ultimately purchase them, too. A percentage of all book proceeds go to Pen America.)

Please share your first *and* a second pick only — use the Comment box. I’ll announce our poll results on September 1. Thanks everyone. I’m SO GLAD we’re reading together, Melisse