Reading List: Memoirs

INTRODUCTION
As with all of the reading lists on this site, this is a living document, meaning I will add to it as I come across books I've omitted, and would love suggestions of any noncelebrity memoir you would highly recommend. As far as the categories, I've done my best--some books fall under multiple categories so I went with the most dominant/specific theme (i.e. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is primarily about Sedaris's childhood, but not entirely, and it's humorous as is Bryson's memoir). I've read many but not all of these, so please let me know if a book belongs under a different heading. If you're interested in travel memoirs, there's a extensive separate reading list posted.

ABUSE MEMOIRS

Please Stop Laughing at Me - Jodee Blanco
Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
Blackbird - Jennifer Lauck

A Child Called It - Dave Pelzer

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Jesus Land  - Julia Scheeres
Lucky - Alice Sebold
The Glass Castle - Jeannete Walls

ANIMAL MEMOIRS

Marley and Me - John Grogan

Seabiscuit - Laura Hillenbrand

Dewey - Vicki Myron
Alex & Me - Irene Pepperberg

CHILDHOOD MEMOIRS
An American Childhood - Annie Dillard
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim - David Sedaris

GRIEF MEMOIRS
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

HUMOROUS MEMOIRS

Close Encounters of the Third-grade Kind - Phillip Done
A Red State of Mind - Nancy French

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

INTERNATIONAL MEMOIRS
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
A Long Way Gone - Ishmael Beah
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kamkwamba with Bryan Mealer
Child of the Jungle - Sabine Kuegler
Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

NATURE MEMOIRS
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
Life in the Treetops - Margaret D. Lowman

RELIGIOUS & SPIRITUALITY MEMOIRS

Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
Angry Conversations with God - Susan Isaacs
The Year of Living Biblically - A.J. Jacobs
Traveling Mercies - Anne Lamott
Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
Shattered Dreams - Irene Spenser

SOCIAL EXPERIMENT MEMOIRS
Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin
The Know-It-All - AJ Jacobs
The Year of Living Biblically - A.J. Jacobs
Living Oprah - Robyn Okrant
Julie and Julia - Julie Powell
The Happiness Project - Gretchen Rubin

OTHER MEMOIRS
Minor Characters - Joyce Johnson

Reading List: Young Adult Short Stories & Fairy Tales

FAIRY TALES, FABLES and SHORT STORIES
Fairy Tales (1835) - Hans Christian Andersen
Aesop's Fables (1484) - Annonymous
One Thousand and One Nights (1706) - Annonymous
Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812) - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
The Jungle Book (1894) / The Second Jungle Book (1895) - Rudyard Kipling
Just So Stories (1902) - Rudyard Kipling
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) / The House at Pooh Corner (1928) - A.A. Milne
Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (1697) - Charles Perrault
New Arabian Nights (1882) / More New Arabian Nights (1885) - Robert Louis Stevenson
Book of Enchantments (1996) - Patricia C. Wrede

Reading List: Young Adult Mystery & Suspense

MYSTERY
The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories series (190 books, 1927 - 2005) - Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym for multiple ghost authors)
Harriet the Spy (1964) - Louise Fitzhugh
Paper Towns (2008) - John Green
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series (175 boos, 1930 - 2003) - Carolyn Keene (pseudonymn for multiple ghost authors)
A Series of Unfortunate Events series (13 books, 1999 - 2006) - Lemony Snicket
Encyclopedia Brown series (26 books, 1963 - 2009) - Donald J. Sobol

SUSPENSE
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1973) - Lois Lowry
Killing Mr. Griffin (1978) - Lois Lowry
Summer of Fear (1976) - Lois Lowry
Remember Me (1989) - Christopher Pike
Fear Street series (117 books, 1989 - 2005) - R.L. Stein

Reading List: Young Adult Contemporary Fiction

CONTEMPORARY NOVELS (Set after 1959)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) - Sherman Alexie
Speak (2001) - Laurie Halse Anderson
Burger Wuss (1999) - M.T. Anderson
Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret (1970) - Judy Blume
Forever (1976) - Judy Blume
Superfudge (1980) - Judy Blume
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series (4 books, 2001 - 2007) - Ann Brashares
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) - Stephen Chbosky
The House on Mango Street (1984) - Sandra Cisneros
*The Ramona series (1955-1999) - Beverly Cleary
*Walk Two Moons (1995) - Sharon Creech
Just Listen (2006) - Sarah Dessen
*My Side of the Mountain (1960) - Jean Craighead George
Looking for Alaska (2005) - John Green
The Outsiders (1967) - S.E. Hinton
Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (4+ books, 2007 - ?) - Jeff Kinney
*From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1968) - E.L. Konigsburg
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) - Harper Lee
Monster (1999) - Walter Dean Myers
*The Black Pearl (1968) - Scott O'Dell
Bridge to Terabithia (1978) - Katherine Paterson
*The Great Gilly Hopkins (1979) - Katherine Paterson
*Jacob Have I Loved (1980) - Katherine Paterson
*Hatchett (1988) - Gary Paulsen
*The Westing Game (1978) - Ellen Raskin
Where the Red Fern Grows (1961) - Wilson Rawls
*Holes (1999) - Louis Sachar
Maniac McGee (1990) - Jerry Spinelli
Stargirl (2000) - Jerry Spinelli
*Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) / Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981) - Mildred D. Taylor
Homecoming (1981) / *Dicey's Song (1982) / A Solitary Blue (1983) - Cynthia Voigt
Izzy, Willy-Nilly (1986) - Cynthia Voigt
The Book Thief (2006) - Marcus Zusack

Reading Lists: Young Adult Historical Fiction

HISTORICAL NOVELS (Set prior to 1959)
Little Women (1868) / Little Men (1871) / Jo's Boys (1886) - Louisa May Alcott
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (2006 - 2009) - M.T. Anderson
*The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (1992) - Avi
A Great and Terrible Beauty (2003) / Rebel Angels (2006) / The Sweet Far Thing (2007) - Libby Bray
*Caddie Woodlawn (1936) - Carol Ryrie Brink
A Little Princess (1905) - Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden (1911) - Frances Hodgson Burnett
*My Brother Sam Is Dead (1975) - James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
What Katy Did series (5 books, 1872 - 1890) - Susan Coolidge
*Lord of the Flies (1954) - William Golding
Captain's Corageous (1897) – Rudyard Kipling
Kim (1901) - Rudyard Kipling
A Separate Peace (1959) - John Knowles
Pippi Longstocking (1945) / Pippi Goes on Board (1946) / Pippi in the South Seas (1948) - Astrid Lindgren
*Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985) / Skylark (1994) / Caleb's Story (2001) - Patricia MacLachlan
The Children of the New Forest (1847) - Frederick Marryat
Bloody Jack series (7 books, 2002 - 2009) - L.A. Meyer
The Anne of Green Gables Novels (8 books, 1908 - 1921) - L.M. Montgomery
Pollyanna (1913) / Pollyanna Grows Up (1915) - Eleanor H. Porter
Fire from Heaven (1969) / The Persian Boy (1972) - Mary Renault
The King Must Die (1958) / The Bull from the Sea (1962) - Mary Renault
Catcher in the Rye (1951) - JD Salinger
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) – Betty Smith
*The Bronze Bow (1962) - Elizabeth Speare
*The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1958) - Elizabeth George Speare
Kidnapped (1886) - Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island (1883) – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) / Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) / Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) – Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) - Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper (1882) - Mark Twain
The Boxcar Children series (19 books, 1924 - 1974) - Gertrude Chandler Warner
*Little House series (11 books, 1932 - 1974) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

Reading List: Young Adult Animal Novels

ANIMAL NOVELS
Watership Down (1972) - Richard Adams
*Sounder (1970) - William H. Armstrong
*Mr. Popper's Penguins (1939) - Richard and Florence Atwater
Paddington Bear series (1958 - 2008) - Michael Bond
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) - Beverly Cleary
*Because of Winn-Dixie (2001) - Kate DiCamillo
The Magician's Elephant (2009) - Kate DiCamillo
The Tale of Desperaux (2003) - Kate DiCamillo
The Tiger Rising (2001) - Kate DiCamillo
*Old Yeller (1957) - Fred Gipson
The Wind in the Willows (1908) - Kenneth Grahame
Redwall series (20+ books, 1987 - ?) - Brian Jacques
*Hoot (2003) - Carl Hiaasen
*Rabbit Hill (1945) - Robert Lawson
*The Dr. Dolittle books (12 books, 1920-1952) - Hugh Lofting
The Call of the Wild (1903) - Jack London
White Fang (1906) – Jack London
*Shiloh (1992) - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
*Rascal (1964) - Sterling North
*Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH (1972) - Robert C. O'Brien
*Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) - Scott O'Dell
My Friend Flicka (1941) / Thunderhead (1943) / Green Grass of Wyoming (1946) - Mary O'Hara
*The Cricket in Times Square (1961) - George Selden
Black Beauty (1877) - Anna Sewell
*Charlotte’s Web (1953) - E.B. White
Stuart Little (1945) - E.B. White
Trumpet of the Swan (1970) - E.B. White

Reading List: Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

FANTASY NOVELS
The Chronicles of Prydain (5 books, 1964-1973) - Lloyd Alexander
The Oz Books (14 books, 1900 - 1920) – L. Frank Baum
The Enchanted Wood (1939) / The Magic Faraway Tree (1943) / The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) - Enid Blyton
The Adventures of the Wishing Chair (1937) / The Wishing Chair Again (1950) / More Wishing Chair Tales (1997) - Enid Blyton
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) / Through the Looking Glass (1871) - Lewis Carroll
Artemis Fowl series (6+ books, 2001 - ?) - Eoin Colfer
*The Dark Is Rising Sequence (5 books, 1966-1977) - Susan Cooper
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) / Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972) - Roald Dahl
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006) - Kate DiCamillo
Ranger's Apprentice series (9+ books, 2004 - ?) - John Flanagan
The Inkworld Trilogy: Inkheart (2003) / Inkspell (2005) / Inkdeath (2008) - Cornelia Funke
Coraline (2002) - Neil Gaiman
*The Graveyard Book (2008) - Neil Gaiman
The Princess Bride (1973) - William Goldman
The Goose Girl (2003) - Shannon Hale
*Princess Academy (2005) - Shannon Hale
Howl's Moving Castle (1986) / Castle in the Air (1990) / House of Many Ways (2008) - Diana Wynne Jones
The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) - Norton Juster
*Ella Enchanted (1998) - Gail Carson Levine
The Chronicles of Narnia (7 books, 1950 - 1956) - C.S. Lewis
*Afternoon of the Elves (1990) - Janet Taylor Lisle
The Abhorsen series (4 books, 1995 - 2006) - Garth Nix
The Borrowers series (4 books, 1952 - 1961) - Mary Norton
The Song of the Lioness series (4 books, 1983 - 1988) - Tamora Pierce
Inheritance Cycle: Eragon (2002) / Eldest (2005) / Brisingr (2008) - Christopher Paolini
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (1995) / The Subtle Knife (1997) / The Amber Spyglass (2000) - Phillip Pullman
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series (5+ books, 2005 - ?) - Rick Riordan
Harry Potter series (7 books, 1997-2007) - J.K. Rowling
The Little Prince (1943) - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Everlost (2009) - Neal Shusterman
The Mysterious Benedict Society series (3+ books, 2007 - ?) - Trenton Lee Stewart
The Hobbit (1937) - J.R.R. Tolkein
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (4 books, 1985 - 1990) - Patricia C. Wrede

SUPERNATURAL NOVELS
Thirsty (1998) - M.T. Anderson
Tuck Everlasting (1975) - Natalie Babbit
House of Night Series (6 books, 2007 - ?) - P.C. Cast
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2007) / City of Ashes (2008) / City of Glass (2009) - Cassandra Clare
Twilight (2005) / New Moon (2006) / Eclipse (2007) / Breaking Dawn (2008) - Stephenie Meyer
Matilda (1988) - Roald Dahl
Vampire Academy series (4+ books, 2007 - ?) - Richelle Mead
Shiver (2009) - Maggie Stiefvater
Beautiful Creatures (2009) - Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Peeps (2005) / The Last Days (2006) - Scott Westerfeld

SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS
Feed (2002) - M.T. Anderson
Ender's Game (1985) - Orson Scott Card
The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games (2008) / Catching Fire (2009) / Mockingjay (2010) - Suzanne Collins
The City of Ember (2003) - Jeanne DuPrau
*House of the Scorpion (2002) - Nancy Farmer
*A Wrinkle in Time series (5 books, 1962 - 1989) - Madeleine L'Engle
*The Giver (1993) / Gathering Blue (2000) / The Messenger (2004) - Lois Lowry
Maximum Ride series (5+ books, 2005 - ?) - James Patterson
House of Stairs (1991) - William Sleator
When You Reach Me (2009) - Rebecca Stead
Uglies (2005) / Pretties (2005) / Specials (2006) / Extras (2007) - Scott Westerfeld

The Classics Challenge

OVERVIEW
This is one of the challenges I'm doing for 2010, along with some of my friends and family. Below is a list of 150 novels, novellas, short story collections, epic poems, and plays. All of these works are considered classics and were published about 50 years ago or more. There is only one book listed per author, so feel free to substitute a different book by the same author, or even add an author you believe should have been included. I'm aware that a few of these books are controversial, some books are classics within a genre, others have cultural relevance. It's up to you to decide what books suit you best.

WHAT TO DO
Copy or print this list and mark which books you've read. Then choose ten books you haven't read to read this year. If you think 10 books is unrealistic for you (or not challenging enough) feel free to adjust the number and time period (one book from this list in the next three months, for instance).

If you have any friends or family members who want to join you, I'd suggest marking any books you'd be open to reading, then comparing lists to see which you have in common. There are quite a few children's classics if you want to try this with your kids. You also might choose to only read a few books together instead of all ten, and then read the rest individually.

THE LIST
1. Aesop’s Fables
2. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
3. A Death in the Family - James Agee
4. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
5. Fairy Tales - Hans Christian Andersen
6. Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson
7. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
8. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
9. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
10. The Black Sheep - Honore De Balzac
11. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
12. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
13. The Mandarins - Simone de Beauvoir
14. Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
15. Beowulf
16. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
18. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
19. The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
20. Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
21. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
22. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
23. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
24. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John le Carre
25. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
26. My Antonia – Willa Cather
27. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
28. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
29. The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
30. The Seagull - Anton Chekhov
31. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
32. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
33. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
34. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
35. The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
36. The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
37. The Enormous Room – e. e. cummings
38. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
39. Inferno - Dante
40. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
41. The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
42. Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
43. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
44. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
45. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
46. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
47. Camille – Alexander Dumas fils.
48. Middlemarch - George Eliot
49. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
50. Medea - Euripedes
51. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
52. Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
53. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
54. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
55. The Good Soldier – Ford Maddox Ford
56. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
57. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
58. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
59. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
60. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
61. Riders of the Purple Range – Zane Grey
62. Grimm's Fairy Tales - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
63. She – H. Rider Haggard
64. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
65. A Raisin in the Sun  - Lorraine Hansberry
66. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
67. Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings - Joel Chandler Harris
68. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
69. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
70. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
71. Cabbages and Kings - O. Henry
72. The Odyssey – Homer
73. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
74. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
75. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
76. A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
77. Daisy Miller – Henry James
78. From Here to Eternity – James Jones
79. Ulysses - James Joyce
80. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
81. Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling
82. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
83. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
84. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
85. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
86. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
87. The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
88. Le Morte d'Arthur - Thomas Malory
89. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
90. Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
91. Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
92. Selected Short Stories - Guy de Maupassant
93. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
94. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
95. The Last Picture Show - Larry McMurtry
96. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
97. Tales of the South Pacific - James Michener
98. Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
99. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
100. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
101. Tartuffe - Molière
102. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
103. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
104. A Good Man Is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor
105. Mourning Becomes Electra - Eugene O'Neill
106. One Thousand and One Nights (a.k.a. Arabian Nights)
107. The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
108. Animal Farm - George Orwell
109. Selected Short Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
110. The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Anne Porter - Katherine Anne Porter
111. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
112. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
113. Clarissa - Samuel Richardson
114. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
115. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
116. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
117. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
118. Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
119. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
120. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
121. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
122. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
123. Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
124. The Faerie Queene - Edmund Spenser
125. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
126. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
127. Dracula - Bram Stoker
128. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
129. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
130. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
131. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
132. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
133. Lady Anna - Anthony Trollope
134. Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
135. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
136. The City and the Pillar – Gore Vidal
137. Candide - Voltaire
138. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
139. All the King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren
140. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
141. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
142. A Curtain of Green - Eudora Welty
143. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
144. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
145. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
146. Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder
147. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
148. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
149. Native Son - Richard Wright
150. Germinal - Emile Zola