Tonight is Book Club. The Secret Literary Goddesses gather to drink, eat, gossip and talk about the books we have selected. We also love nothing more than when one of our book picks turns into a movie, so we were delighted when Wild hit the theatres. The movie is based on a memoir by the same name, written by Cheryl Strayed. It is the story about a ’26-year-old woman who following the death of her mother, divorce, and a run of reckless behavior, finds herself alone near the foot of the Pacific Crest Trail–inexperienced, over-equipped, and desperate to reclaim her life. Wild tracks Strayed’s personal journey on the PCT through California and Oregon, as she comes to terms with devastating loss and her unpredictable reactions to it.’ I thought it was ambitious to film a movie about a solitary hike, but when I heard that it was being directed by Jean-Marc Vallée who directed Dallas Buyer’s Club, I wanted to see it. The movie was okay, it is so hard to do justice to a great book because everyone visualizes it in their own way. After the movie, one of my girlfriends said “Nothing can replace your imagination.” So true.
I haven’t read many memoirs, but I’ve found that I’m becoming more interested in that genre. I subscribe to goodreads.com and noticed that Amazon’s book editors have released their definitive list of “100 Biographies and Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime.” From the list of 100, I’ve read a total of 13 (lame, I know). It is a very well rounded list that runs the emotional spectrum from classics like Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank to laugh out loud biographies such as Naked by David Sedaris. Segue to sports. We like tennis but it is not the “go to” sport in our family which is why I was surprised when I saw that we had Open by Andre Agassi on our bookshelf. Normally, I’m not into the typical sports biography that chronicles the rise of a pro athelete. But the photo on the book was so compelling to me and I remember watching Agassi play tennis, so I read the first few pages and couldn’t put it down. It is a phenomenal book to read, regardless if you have ever held a tennis racquet.
I’ve bolded the books I have read and I’m looking forward to selecting the next one from this great list.
xo,
Sarah
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah
A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, Ernest Hemingway
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson
American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 – 1964, William Manchester
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Jon Meacham
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, Chris Kyle
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph J. Ellis
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, Frank McCourt
Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy
Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Vol. 1, Mark Twain
Ball Four: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Jim Bouton
Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth, Richard Wright
Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, Steve Martin
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall
Bossypants, Tina Fey
Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny Cash
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Robert K. Massie
Chronicles, Bob Dylan
Churchill: A Life, Martin Gilbert
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phillip Hoose
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, William Styron
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings (Penguin Classics), Oscar Wilde
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, Alexandra Fuller
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, Marion Meade
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barack Obama
Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp
Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (P.S.), Zora Neale Hurston
E=mc~2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation, David Bodanis
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story, Amanda Vaill
Helen Keller: The Story of My Life (Dover Thrift Editions), Helen Keller
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
Just Kids, Patti Smith
Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.), Anthony Bourdain
Knock Wood, Candice Bergen
Life, Keith Richards
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela
Meditations (Dover Thrift Editions), Marcus Aurelius
Mortality, Christopher Hitchens
My Life in France, Julia Child
Naked, David Sedaris
Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Dover Thrift Editions), Frederick Douglass
Night, Elie Wiesel
Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Open: An Autobiography, Andre Agassi
Out of Africa: and Shadows on the Grass, Isak Dinesen
Personal History, Katharine Graham
Robert A. Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson Set: The Path to Power; Means of Ascent; Master of the Senate; The Passage of Power, Robert A. Caro
Running with Scissors: A Memoir, Augusten Burroughs
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nancy Milford
Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Ballantine Reader’s Circle), Laura Hillenbrand
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, Timothy Egan
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Vladimir Nabokov
Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character), Richard P. Feynman
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, John Lahr
The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo, Irving Stone
The Andy Warhol Diaries, Andy Warhol
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley, Malcolm X
The Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll
The Bell Jar (P.S.), Sylvia Plath
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother (10th Anniversary Edition), James McBride
The Complete Maus, 25th Anniversary Edition, Art Spiegelman
The Complete Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934, Anais Nin
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, Carlos Fuentes
The Glass Castle: A Memoir, Jeannette Walls
The Gulag Archipelago Abridged: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (P.S.), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life, Robert Evans
The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television, Evan I. Schwartz
The Liars’ Club: A Memoir, Mary Karr
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey, Ernesto Che Guevara
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.), Simon Winchester
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Modern Library Paperbacks), Edmund Morris
The Soul of A New Machine, Tracy Kidder
The Tender Bar: A Memoir, J. R. Moehringer
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, Tobias Wolff
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Ron Chernow
Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man’s Miraculous Survival, Joe Simpson
Travels with Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy, Frances Mayes
Updike, Adam Begley
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), Stacy Schiff
West with the Night, Beryl Markham
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed
