Memoirs about ordinary and extraordinary moments

I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working

by Shauna Niequist

An all-too-relatable exploration of how to find new ways to live, work, and be in the world when our long-held beliefs and methods fail us. In this warm and wise collection of essayettes, Niequist relates the midlife circumstances that forced her to reconsider many things she thought she knew for sure, and to find new ways of living when the old ways broke down. Along the way she discusses love and friendship, trauma and loss, parenting and being parented, reading (so much reading!), and moving from the midwest town she thought she’d never leave to Manhattan at age forty. I inhaled it in one big enjoyable and occasionally teary gulp, while highlighting it to pieces and texting friends quotes with the caption Weren’t we just talking about this? Comforting, practical, and wise, with meditations of faith and a chapter or two on Christian prayer; this reads like the kind of girls’ night conversation that keeps you out too late because you can’t bear to leave. For fans of Kelly Corrigan’s Tell Me More and Brené Brown’s Rising Strong.

Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives

by Mary Laura Philpott

Among the finest—perhaps THE finest—memoir-in-essays I’ve ever read. This intimate look at family life is like sitting down with a trusted friend to talk about what matters most in life. Philpott’s leaping-off point is her teenage son’s middle-of-the-night medical emergency. She never sees it coming, but later wondered, Should I have known? He stabilized, but nothing is the same after that pivotal moment. In the aftermath, Philpott explores her long-held desire to keep those she loves safe through sheer will or worrying—but if that doesn’t work, what can we do instead? She wrestles through the answers in these pages. Witty and candid, deeply relatable, humorous and heartstopping, with tales of hypothetical disaster balanced with restful interludes featuring Frank the Turtle and the Philpott family dogs. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll text all your friends. For fans of Kelly Corrigan’s The Middle Place, with interesting parallels to Nicki Erlick’s The Measure.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life: A Memoir

by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

“[Rosenthal] shines her generous light of humanity on the seemingly humdrum moments of life and shows how delightfully precious they actually are.” —The Chicago Sun-Times

And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

by Meaghan O'Connell

From What Should I Read Next episode 195—Wanted: Book enthusiast at large with Mary Laura Philpott: You might assume in a memoir about a woman getting pregnant and having a baby there must be some wild and crazy larger than life element, like you know, was she in college and she got accidentally pregnant? She had to decide what to do or did she get pregnant, and then her husband killed a bunch of people and went to jail? You know, what's the big twist? And there isn't a big twist. She was engaged, about to get married to this great guy. They just got pregnant a little earlier than they meant to and she had to wrap her mind around this big change happening in her life. This big permanent change, she just writes with such candid but really intelligent humor and introspection.

What We Carry: A Memoir

by Maya Shanbhag Lang

Maya Shanbhag Lang’s memoir opens with a fable. Her brilliant mother tells the tale in Lang's own early days of motherhood, and its significance unspools through the chapters ahead. The author’s backstory is revealed in vignettes with alternate timelines: born to an Indian immigrant family with an abusive father and a psychiatrist mother, she clings to the relationship with her mom through a divorce and a cross-country move. After having her first child, Lang just wants her mother to be there for her, but she’s met with a cold and confusing distance. It turns out her mother is struggling with Alzheimer’s, and once she steps in as caretaker, stories and long-held secrets begin to emerge. Poetic and moving, this is a story of generational healing, motherhood, and mental illness.

The Light of the World: A Memoir

by Elizabeth Alexander

In Alexander's words: "The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story." The author's husband died just four days after his fiftieth birthday. A few years later, Alexander looks back on their life together, their love, and the impact of that loss in her life. The author is a poetry professor at Yale, which is obvious in the story's richness and language. Her source material is fantastic: Alexander is an American, born in Harlem. Her husband was born in Eritrea, in East Africa, and came to New Haven as a refugee from war. Both were artists—that’s his painting on the cover of the book—and their home sounds like this amazing, vibrant, multicultural extravaganza with food and friends and music and art. I could barely put this down, and while sad, it exudes joy. Heads up for audiophiles: Alexander's narration of her own work is magnificent. Published April 15 2015.

Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say

by Kelly Corrigan

I adored this book; I wish I could download it into my brain. Kelly talks in depth about how after her friend Liz was diagnosed with cancer, they both pushed past the surface stuff to forge a powerful and enduring friendship. (The dedication page makes me cry every time: "I wish we could have done this together, Lizzard, though in a way, we sort of did.") This book will make you want to be a better friend, and also give you insight into how. Personal, heartfelt, and really really good.

The Book of Delights: Essays

by Ross Gay

Thoughtful, poetic, and powerful. Much like keeping a daily gratitude journal, poet Ross Gay wrote slice of life essays every day for an entire year. Nothing is too small or insignificant to cause delight, from candy wrappers to nicknames, to basketball—and this unique format reveals just as much as a tell-all memoir. Please note that while this book is packed with delights there are also some tough moments and hard themes. He reminds us to find delight in the every day, even in spite of life’s injustices and difficulties that so often come our way.

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

by Suleika Jaouad

From the publisher: "In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter 'the real world.' She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives."

These Precious Days: Essays

by Ann Patchett

In this broad essay collection (beloved by booksellers), Ann Patchett reflects on the writing life, significant friendships, bookstore ownership, and taking mushrooms (really!). I had read earlier versions of some pieces before—and maybe you have, too, because we shared them in Links I Love, but I enjoyed both revisiting those and reading her new work. While I adored peeking into Patchett’s writing life, my favorite essays in this collection center not on her authorial pursuits but on complex family relationships. This should come as no surprise to fans of her fiction: Patchett is decidedly gifted when it comes to stories of significant relationships. Flip right to "The Nightstand" and "Two More Things I Want to Say About My Father" for moving pieces on life’s unexpected turns.

Memoirs about ordinary and extraordinary moments

I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working

Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life: A Memoir

And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

What We Carry: A Memoir

The Light of the World: A Memoir

Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say

The Book of Delights: Essays

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

These Precious Days: Essays

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100 Book recommendations
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Memoirs about ordinary and extraordinary moments

Find your next read with:

100 Book recommendations for every mood

100 Book recommendations
for every mood