Puss Reboots: Blog: November 2009: Booking Through Thursday: It's All About ME

Booking Through Thursday: It's All About Me: 11/05/09

Which do you prefer? Biographies written about someone? Or Autobiographies written by the actual person (and/or ghost-writer)?

Memoirs and biographies aren't something I read all that frequently. This year for example, I've reviewed close to 400 books and stories. From that entire list of things reviewed, I've only chosen to read six memoirs. I have also read a biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Suzanne M. Coil but I haven't reviewed it yet. So that makes 7 books total, or roughly 2% of my total reading this year.

Memoir covers

The Memoirs I've Read

Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner:
There were a few moments though that I will remember beyond the point where I forget the title, the author and when I read it. The first of those is Stegner's description of the culture shock between winter and summer. During the winter he traveled north into town to go to school. There he was clearly in Canada. Then during the summer he'd be on the farm plowing the fields that butted up against the 49th parallel. He could through rocks into the United States. He watched life go by on America prairies. As a kid growing on a border town I related to Stegner's sentiments.

Candy and Me by Hilary Liftin:
Despite her addiction to sugar, Liftin comes off as an otherwise normal, happy and well adjusted individual. Her writing style is charming and I'd probably love talking to her if we were to meet in person.

Kampung Boy by Lat:
Besides being a fun coming of age story, Kampung Boy was educational for me. I went into the book knowing next to nothing about Malaysia. I came away with a better feeling for some of the country's culture and a desire to learn more.

Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee:
Lewis Buzbee is a Bay Area native. He was born and raised in San Jose about the same time my mother was growing up in the Bay Area. Many of the places he describes are places I've heard about from relatives or visited as a child on the trips I took to the south Bay with my grandmother.

South-Seas Idyls by Charles Warren Stoddard:
The book has seventeen letters and they bounce around between Tahiti and the Hawaiian islands and points in between. Stoddard starts off the book with letters from his kith and kin back home worried that he'll be miserable on the trip. He's just the opposite and he promptly "goes native." In and amongst his loving descriptions of the native traditions (including hula and luaus) and the gorgeous sunsets, Stoddard also describes the different men in his life. He sometimes dances around his relationships by blaming their native beauty or lamely saying he couldn't tell if his companion was male or female. The latter argument never works because he almost always goes on to say that he doesn't care that he can't tell.

Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masumoto:
Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masumoto comes in the middle of his writing career but is one of the fist books he wrote after taking over the family farm. Much of his apprehension and frustration is recorded in this memoir but structurally it has many similarities with Four Seasons in Five Senses (2003).

booking through thursday

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