Browse · 73 books
Memoir books
Personal memoirs and autobiographical narratives distinct from formal biographies. Narrow it by mood, length or era, or let us pull one off the shelf.
All 73 memoir books
A Stolen Life
Jaycee Dugard
4.5(13k)288 pages · 2011Readers drawn to survivor memoirs and the psychology of resilience under extreme conditions — particularly those who followed Dugard's case through news coverage and want the interiority, continuity, and systemic accountability that reporting could never provide.
DarkHopeful
The Friday Afternoon Club
Griffin Dunne
4.4(6.4k)400 pages · 2024Readers who want Hollywood-insider storytelling anchored in genuine literary lineage and real stakes — admirers of Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne, and readers of true-crime-adjacent memoirs who want the trial material to be substantial rather than incidental.
DarkFunny
Famesick
Lena Dunham
4.5(6.9k)416 pages · 2025Readers who followed Girls and want the unfiltered account of what was happening offscreen — and illness-memoir readers who want endometriosis, Ehlers–Danlos, and addiction rendered with specificity rather than uplift.
DarkFunny
Greenlights
Matthew McConaughey
4.6(75k)304 pages · 2020Readers drawn to celebrity memoirs with genuine philosophical backbone — particularly those who enjoy conversational, voice-driven nonfiction and are open to a hybrid of life story, diary excerpts, and aphoristic wisdom rather than a conventional career narrative.
UpliftingHopeful
The Many Lives of Mama Love
Lara Love Hardin
4.6(21k)320 pages · 2023Readers who want a fast, emotionally open memoir of addiction and jail, and who prioritize the family-custody story over a detailed account of drug use.
DarkUplifting
The Wilder Way
Eva zu Beck
4.8(212)336 pages · 2026Readers drawn to women's adventure memoir who want the full, unsanitised picture — the recklessness alongside the wonder.
HopefulMelancholy
You with the Sad Eyes
Christina Applegate
4.5(4.3k)304 pages · 2026Readers drawn to celebrity memoirs that trade career gloss for psychological rawness — particularly those interested in Christina Applegate's life through the lens of childhood trauma, MS diagnosis, and the kind of candid self-examination rarely found in the genre.
DarkFunny
I, Tina
turner-tina-with
4.7272 pages · 1986Readers who know Tina Turner through the 1993 film or her music and want her own account of the Ike and Tina years and the solo career that followed.
DarkUplifting
Pedro Pan Learning to Dance
Mario Garcia
4.8(6)196 pages · 2026Readers with a specific interest in the Operation Pedro Pan exodus who want a firsthand Cuban-American account shaped by a writer whose career in media design gives the storytelling an unusually reflective quality.
UpliftingHopeful
Prone to Wander
Suzanne LaVenture
4.9(38)224 pages · 2025Readers who have spent time abroad through study or work and are curious how one woman's decades of international travel gradually dismantled and rebuilt her sense of faith and self.
UpliftingFunny
My Booky Wook
Russell Brand
4.0368 pages · 2007Readers who want a frank, darkly funny celebrity memoir about addiction and ambition rather than a tidy recovery narrative, and who can handle heavy swearing and explicit material.
DarkFunny
Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen
4.4(8.8k)192 pages · 1993Readers drawn to the intersection of mental health, gender, and 1960s social history who want a documentary-grounded memoir that interrogates the boundary between sanity and socially defined nonconformity.
DarkFunny
A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson
4.4(27k)276 pages · 1998Armchair travelers, nature enthusiasts, and fans of humor-driven nonfiction who want an entertaining, substantive introduction to the Appalachian Trail — its ecology, history, and conservation challenges — without requiring any prior interest in wilderness endurance writing.
View from the East Wing
Jill Biden
4.5(1.1k)288 pages · 2025Readers drawn to intimate, character-driven political memoir who want the lived, first-person texture of the Biden White House years — including candid family grief, historic firsts, and genuinely newsworthy disclosures — rather than a forensic policy retrospective.
HopefulMelancholy
The Land and Its People
David Sedaris
4.5(2.9k)272 pages · 2026Longtime Sedaris readers — particularly those who found his two most recent grief-heavy collections emotionally draining — who are ready to welcome back his acerbic, travel-fuelled comic voice now sharpened by a harder-won awareness of mortality.
UpliftingFunny
Lucky Man
Michael J. Fox
4.6(3.5k)272 pages · 2002Readers drawn to celebrity memoir or illness narrative who want an account that balances Hollywood candour with genuine emotional weight — particularly those with a personal or professional connection to Parkinson's disease.
YAUpliftingFunny
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Haruki Murakami
4.4(11k)192 pages · 2008Readers curious about how a globally celebrated literary novelist actually structures his creative life — particularly those drawn to the intersection of physical discipline and artistic practice.
UpliftingMelancholy
Foley is Good
Mick Foley
4.6616 pages · 2001Readers who finished Have a Nice Day! and want the continuation of Foley's story, including the "I Quit" match and his own detailed defence of the WWF against its critics.
UpliftingFunny
Making It So
Patrick Stewart
4.7480 pages · 2023Readers who enjoy theatre history, rags-to-riches life stories and a self-deprecating narrator more than franchise lore, and who don't mind a long, chronological telling.
UpliftingFunny
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
Steven Tyler
4.2(2.5k)432 pages · 2011Devoted Aerosmith fans and rock-memoir enthusiasts who want Steven Tyler's full personality — chaos, bravado, and all — on the page rather than a sober, structured account of his life.
PropulsiveFunny
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Hunter S. Thompson
4.6(1.4k)512 pages · 1973Readers drawn to American political history, literary journalism, or Hunter S. Thompson's career who want to understand the 1972 presidential race through the most viscerally immersive — if deliberately unorthodox — account ever written about it.
PropulsiveFunny
Controversy Creates Cash
Eric Bischoff, Jeremy Roberts
4.4(493)400 pages · 2006Fans of professional wrestling's business history who want an executive-level account of the Monday Night War — particularly the talent strategy, television deal-making, and boardroom manoeuvring behind WCW's mid-1990s surge — told by the man most responsible for forcing WWE into genuine competition.
PropulsiveTense
Wrestling the Hulk
Linda Hogan
3.8(91)256 pages · 2011Readers curious about the private reality behind VH1's Hogan Knows Best — particularly those interested in accounts of women rebuilding identity after high-profile, difficult marriages — who want a perspective on the Hogan family's domestic life unavailable from any other source.
DarkHopeful
Life
Keith Richards
4.5(8.1k)416 pages · 1998Serious music fans — particularly those drawn to the Rolling Stones, blues history, or the craft of guitar playing — who want a deep, candid account of Richards's life rather than a polished celebrity memoir.
MelancholyLeisurely
Showing 24 of 73
Every memoir book, A to Z73 titles
- A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety · Jimmy Carter
- A Stolen Life · Jaycee Dugard
- A Walk in the Woods · Bill Bryson
- Around the World in 50 Years · Albert Podell
- Be Ready When the Luck Happens · Ina Garten
- Bicycling with Butterflies · Sara Dykman
- Birds, Beasts and Relatives · Gerald Durrell
- Carried Away · Ross Meador
- Controversy Creates Cash · Eric Bischoff, Jeremy Roberts
- Crying in H Mart · Michelle Zauner
- Dancing with Death · Jean-Philippe Soulé
- Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? · Steven Tyler
- Educated · Tara Westover
- Education of a Wandering Man · Louis L'Amour
- Emergence · David Sussillo
- Famesick · Lena Dunham
- Far and Wild · Fabiana Capuano, Brant Huddleston
- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 · Hunter S. Thompson
- Finding Home · Djenane Nakhle
- Foley is Good · Mick Foley
- Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing · Matthew Perry
- Girl, Interrupted · Susanna Kaysen
- Greenlights · Matthew McConaughey
- Hillbilly Elegy · J. D. Vance
- Hooked on the Horizon · Tom Dymond
- I, Tina · turner-tina-with
- Ingredienti · Marcella Hazan, Victor Hazan
- Inside Out · Alexandra Stein
- It's a Long Story: My Life · Willie Nelson
- Kitchen Confidential · Anthony Bourdain
- Lands of Lost Borders · Kate Harris
- Life · Keith Richards
- Life Travel And The People In Between · Mike Nixon
- Lucky Man · Michael J. Fox
- Making It So · Patrick Stewart
- My Booky Wook · Russell Brand
- My Year of Really Bad Dates · Rachel Lithgow
- Never Broken · Jewel
- No Spin: My Autobiography · Shane Warne
- No Time Like the Future · Michael J Fox
- Once Upon a Continent · Susanna Janssen
- Open · Andre Agassi
- Out of the Corner · Jennifer Grey
- Pedro Pan Learning to Dance · Mario Garcia
- Prone to Wander · Suzanne LaVenture
- She Explores · Gale Straub
- Sonny Boy · Al Pacino
- Strangers · Belle Burden
- The Crossing · Sophie Matterson
- The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell · Aldous Huxley
- The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man · Paul Newman
- The Friday Afternoon Club · Griffin Dunne
- The Glass Castle · Jeannette Walls
- The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost · Rachel Friedman
- The Land and Its People · David Sedaris
- The Lost Girls · Jennifer Baggett
- The Many Lives of Mama Love · Lara Love Hardin
- The South American Tour · Annie S. Peck
- The Tell · Linda I. Meyers
- The Uncool · Cameron Crowe
- The Wilder Way · Eva zu Beck
- This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection · Carol Burnett
- Travels with Charley in Search of America · John Steinbeck
- View from the East Wing · Jill Biden
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running · Haruki Murakami
- When Breath Becomes Air · Paul Kalanithi
- Where the Wind Wills · D. Flower
- Wherever the Road Leads · K. Lang-Slattery
- Who Knew? · Romy Shiller
- Wild · Cheryl Strayed
- Without Reservations · Alice Steinbach
- Wrestling the Hulk · Linda Hogan
- You with the Sad Eyes · Christina Applegate