Here are 100 books that Memoir fans have personally recommended if you like
Memoir.
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I was always a bookworm, even reading the encyclopedia as a child. I was equally drawn to the sciences and literature and ended up getting a PhD in Chemistry. I visited Asia often for my chemistry work and gradually became interested in the philosophy and religion of Asian cultures. Today, I'm more likely to brag about what I’ve written or read about Chinese culture than I am to mention my technical patents.
I first read the Canticle forty years ago, and yet, when asked to recommend five books, this was the first one that came to mind. It threw me into an insane world, yet one that seemed only too possible.
My favorite character is Abraham, a tent-dwelling timeless man who lives through the several generations that the book follows. I am not a fan of dystopia, but this is an exception. Now that I’ve recommended it- I’m going to go read it again.
In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter.
In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope for humanity's rebirth…
I’ve written over 30 novels, mostly fantasy, until meeting a prepper years ago in a tavern with a cold beer and a quiet table. He explained that EVERYTHING depends on farmers and trucks carrying food to us. My last six or eight novels dwell on that one theme, no matter if the cause is volcanoes erupting, social breakdown, or an upcoming war. When the food is scarce…well, that’s the background for books I enjoy.
This 1962 novel was the first I read of this genre, and it stuck with me. While somewhat dated (a lot), it held my attention again a few years ago. Not many can hold up for so many years, and what it relates still resonates today.
In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence.
Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.
A poignant novel about finding a new normal after the upheaval of a global crisis.
There are things expressed only in writing, never spoken aloud in our culture. We can find them in books, in the honesty and insights of those willing to take the time and make the effort to say what they feel and think. Another reason to read is for the sheer joy of a story well told, one that can open both the mind and the heart. I have published 7 novels and a collection of short stories, have just retired from teaching creative writing at the university level. My life has been spent among books. Simply, I am in awe of the ones recommended here.
This novel is the story of William Stoner, raised on a US midwestern farm, who becomes an English professor at the University of Missouri. It follows his life throughout, in simple prose, becoming both moving and profound. It was introduced to me by a knowledgeable NY city book dealer back in the 90s. I pick it up every few years for another reading experience. It’s become a bit of an obscure classic.
'It's the most marvellous discovery for everyone who loves literature' Ian McEwan, BBC Radio 4
Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on bestseller lists across Europe. Forty-eight years after its first, quiet publication in the US, Stoner is finally finding the wide and devoted readership it deserves. Have you read it yet?
William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
There are things expressed only in writing, never spoken aloud in our culture. We can find them in books, in the honesty and insights of those willing to take the time and make the effort to say what they feel and think. Another reason to read is for the sheer joy of a story well told, one that can open both the mind and the heart. I have published 7 novels and a collection of short stories, have just retired from teaching creative writing at the university level. My life has been spent among books. Simply, I am in awe of the ones recommended here.
Mockler is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada). This small volume (poetry? prose? sui generis?) knocked me out the first time I read it in 2011, and its brevity has led to me re-reading it several times since. About an 18-year-old girl working in a canning factory in London, Ontario—wise, funny, moving, honest... it’s got it all. I’ve purchased several copies over the years and use them as gifts to fellow readers. Highly recommended.
In the late 1980s of London, Ontario-a time in Canada when the recession lay like a lead weight on the shoulders of young people, leaving the future bleak-an eighteen-year-old girl is working for the summer at a corn canning factory. Her story is told through a series of masterfully-sculpted linked poems, following her relationship with her boyfriend, her alcoholic mother, her terminally-ill grandfather, the factory job, and the man who every night "peels an onion and eats it as if it were an apple." The Onion Man doesn't speak English and is tormented by the other workers, and ater his…
I am an expert on being a cancer patient because I was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 2017. I am also a former oncology and hospice nurse. A cancer diagnosis always feels like a calamity and my work with very sick cancer patients showed me how serious the disease can be. I also thought that our health care system would react to cancer with compassion, but I was wrong. I felt on my own as a patient, and that experience led me to reflect on my nursing work. Healing alternates between me being a nurse and a patient. The alteration shows the failings of our health care system, and how to make it more caring.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer I sampled outside information about breast cancer sparingly and this was the only book that made the cut. I dipped into it when I had a question and otherwise left it alone, but afterward I was usually glad I checked to see what Susan Love had to say and appreciated the big picture context that the book offers. If you can afford it, get the most recent edition since it will be the most accurate about treatment plans and ongoing research.
For a woman faced with a diagnosis of breast cancer, the information available today is vast, uneven, and confusing. For more than two decades, readers have relied on Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book to guide them through this frightening thicket of research and opinion to find the best possible options for their particular situations. This sixth edition explains exciting advances in targeted treatments, hormonal therapies, safer chemotherapy, and immunologic approaches as well as new forms of surgery and radiation. There is extensive guidance for the increasing number of women living for years with metastatic breast cancer. With Dr. Love's warm…
I started conducting primary research about the Holocaust in the 1990s, when I spent a week interviewing my grandfather, a Holocaust survivor and a pious Hasid, about his life. Fascinated with the survival of his faith, I applied for and received a grant from the Religion News Service to explore spiritual aspects of the Holocaust. I also sought to answer my saba’s question: How did Israelis end up fighting their 1948 War of Independence with Nazi weapons such as the Mauser he had received? I answered it in the 2015 PBS documentary I directed and produced, A Wing and a Prayer, and the 2020 nonfiction book I wrote, Saving Israel.
My Polish-Hasidic grandfather, Ozer Grundman, survived several Nazi labor and death camps in his teens but succumbed to cancer in his early 70s. Reading about another Central European Jew (Otto Warburg) who outlasted Hitler, albeit through radically different means, made me wish my saba had been familiar with this German biochemist’s research. Had he heard the Nobel Laureate’s argument that metabolic factors propel cancer’s growth and spread, my saba might have cut down on his unchecked sugar consumption. Then again, despite the recent reevaluation and, in many cases, reappreciation of Warburg’s work, the jury is still out on sugar’s portrayal as the puppet master of America’s No. 2 killer. What is certain is Sam Apple’s assured Ravenous portraiture of a puzzling protagonist who capitalized on the Nazis’ cancer fears to such an extent that he carried on his experiments at Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Society throughout World War II and lived…
The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg was widely regarded as one of the most important biochemists of the twentieth century. A Jewish homosexual living openly with his partner, he was also among the most despised figures in the Third Reich. Yet top Nazi officials-perhaps even Hitler himself-dreaded cancer and protected Warburg in the hope he could cure it.
Using new archival sources and interviews with current cancer authorities, Sam Apple depicts a relentless figure, hungry for fame, who pursued his research even as the world around him disintegrated. Remarkably, Warburg's theory about the metabolic origins of cancer has been revived in…
At the age of forty-nine, Laurie Woodford rents out her house, packs her belongings into two suitcases, and leaves her life in upstate New York to relocate to Seoul, South Korea. What begins as an opportunity to teach college English in Asia evolves into a nomadic adventure.
I'm a long-time journalist, wife, mother, and grandmother, who was diagnosed with GYN cancer at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in the spring of 2020. My usual subjects are the arts and trauma, but since I’m now one of the more than 600,000 American women with GYN cancer, I decided to write this report about my year of treatment.
This is a scholarly memoir by a co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic, the feminist literary classic, and a professor of English and women’s studies at Indiana University. She was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer in 2008, then a virtual death sentence. Gubar describes several stages of treatment including "debulking" and chemotherapy and the importance of a loving support system.
The writing is sober, well-documented, comprehensive, and, though published ten years ago, all too relevant.
Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008, Susan Gubar underwent radical debulking surgery, an attempt to excise the cancer by removing part or all of many organs in the lower abdomen. Her memoir mines the deepest levels of anguish and devotion as she struggles to come to terms with her body's betrayal and the frightful protocols of contemporary medicine. She finds solace in the abiding love of her husband, children, and friends while she searches for understanding in works of literature, visual art, and the testimonies of others who suffer with various forms of cancer.
I’m a seeker and fascinated by spirituality. Books were among some of my best friends growing up and I’ve been reading and writing for as long as I can remember. I started my business Write On Creative in 2003 and have helped mission-driven business owners, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders craft their messages, create marketing messages with integrity, and develop strategies to get their work out into the world. I firmly believe that business is personal so it makes sense that my first book released via the Write On Creative Publishing imprint is my story of healing with love. I live in magical, Ashland, Oregon and love spending time in nature.
Radical Remission was my go-to healing guide when faced with cancer.
What impressed me most about Dr. Kelly Turner is her ability to connect the dots and realize that spontaneous remission wasn’t actually spontaneous. She did extensive research to determine the 9 key factors that help people heal from cancer (and they are not what you might think).
This is a must-have for all resource libraries. I’m also deeply honored that my book was included in The Radical Remission Projects newsletter as recommended reading.
In her New York Times bestseller, Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, Dr. Kelly A. Turner, founder of the Radical Remission Project, uncovers nine factors that can lead to a spontaneous remission from cancer—even after conventional medicine has failed.
While getting her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkley, Dr. Turner, a researcher, lecturer, and counselor in integrative oncology, was shocked to discover that no one was studying episodes of radical (or unexpected) remission—when people recover against all odds without the help of conventional medicine, or after conventional medicine has failed. She was so fascinated by this kind of…
Unleash Your God-Given Healing is the book I never wanted to write. As an educator and trained researcher, I uncovered some of the reasons I got a cancer I had no risk factors or genetics for. I also discovered what I could do to help my doctors to beat my cancer and prevent a recurrence. After surgeries and then chemo and immunotherapy for a year, my cancer was gone. My doctors called me their “Rock Star” cancer patient and attributed my lifestyle changes as to why I fared well and returned quickly to vibrant health. I realized that what I learned could help many people. The treasures I learned are in this book.
This book was one of the first books I read when researching what I could do to help my doctors to beat my cancer. Dr. Quillin is one of the top experts in beating cancer with nutrition both for the patient undergoing treatments and for the patient using holistic methods. This book gives valuable information and insight into how diet can both prevent and heal cancer. Powerful.
Cancer has escalated from a once obscure disease to a leading cause of death worldwide. Chemo, radiation, and surgery can reduce tumor burden but do nothing to change the underlying causes of cancer. Enter the need for this book. Using evidence-based guidelines, this book gives you a simple diet and supplement program to augment your doctor's best care while undergoing cancer treatment. This book shows the reader how nutrition can augment immune functions, make chemo and radiation more of a selective toxin against the cancer but not the patient, reverse or prevent the common malnutrition, starve the sugar feeding cancer,…
Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. is a true story of brotherly love overcoming all. Reuben, who has Down's syndrome, was trapped in a care home during the pandemic, spiralling deeper into a non-verbal depression. From isolation and in desperation, he sent his older brother Manni a text, "brother. do. you.…
I was 32 when diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As a clinician, and now cancer survivor, I’ve become increasingly focused on empowering cancer patients through and beyond remission. Nearly two decades of clinical practice have taught me that an informed and committed patient makes better decisions about their care, harmoniously interfaces with their healthcare team, and stays focused on living a healthy lifestyle. I’ve read countless books about cancer, but this list outlines the essentials that I recommend to patients beginning their healing journey.
After a cancer diagnosis, it is natural to wonder what causes cancer. Our understanding of cancer etiology continues to evolve as the science of genetics deepens. The Cancer Code reviews this research in laymen’s terms such that each reader can construct a narrative about what factors may have contributed to their illness. A successful cancer patient is an informed cancer patient, navigating the system with an appreciation for why some standard of care therapies are more effective than others. This book allowed me to look under the hood of cancer in a way that guided my decisions before and after remission.
Author of the international bestsellers The Diabetes Code and The Obesity Code Dr. Jason Fung returns with an eye-opening biography of cancer in which he offers a radical new paradigm for understanding cancer-and issues a call to action for reducing risk moving forward.
Our understanding of cancer is slowly undergoing a revolution, allowing for the development of more effective treatments. For the first time ever, the death rate from cancer is showing a steady decline . . . but the "War on Cancer" has hardly been won.
In The Cancer Code, Dr. Jason Fung offers a revolutionary new understanding of…
