Literary Biographies & Memoirs Nominations • September 2013

[Pablo]

I would like to nominate Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

From Wikipedia:

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938.

Orwell served as a private, a corporal (cabo) and—when the informal command structure of the militia gave way to a conventional hierarchy in May 1937—as a lieutenant, on a provisional basis, in Catalonia and Aragon from December 1936 until June 1937. In June 1937 the leftist political party with whose militia he served (the POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist party) was declared an illegal organization and Orwell was consequently forced to flee or face imprisonment.

The book can be downloaded here from the University of Adelaide site for readers living in life+50 countries

[sun surfer]

I'll second Homage to Catalonia and fourth The Road from Coorain.

[Bookpossum]

I have always meant to read Pepys, so I fourth his Diary.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I haven't been participating at all lately, but I've been on a non-fiction kick lately and the current book I'm working my way slowly though is a perfect fit. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

This nomination sounds very interesting, but I unfortunately passed on supporting it because of its length. I'm usually all for whatever length nomination so long as I'm interested but at, it seems, almost a thousand pages, Team of Rivals would be one of our longest selections yet - which is all good except that, after a slate of other longer selections recently between both clubs, the prospect this month seems a bit...daunting!

Speaking of daunting, can it be true that The Diary of Samuel Pepys is really 4,000 pages long? Before we get to the vote, I wonder if Hamlet53 would like to clarify the nomination? Is the nomination for the entire diary, as the free MR download link he provided would indicate, or for an abridged version? Or will it be each person for themselves to decide how much they want to read?

[Synamon]

For something shorter, I'll nominate Night by Elie Wiesel. Warning: the subject matter is not light. Available as an ebook in the stores (~$5 at Amazon.com) and I found an audiobook at my library.

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died.

[desertblues]

I'll second Night by Eli Wiesel

[paola]

coming late to the party after a week of no internet, but just in case there is still time I nominate Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by June Chang. Along with the stories of the authors, her mother and her granmother, it also sweeps through the history of 20th century China. As for its literary value, Penelope Fitzgerald praised it in the London Review of Books. More reviews extracts here and here.
Available as ebook, it is originally in English.

[issybird]

Second Wild Swans.

[Bookpossum]

Dang - I've run out of votes or I would also support Wild Swans, as a paper copy has been on my groaning TBR shelf for some time.

[fantasyfan]

I'll third Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

[Bookworm_Girl]

I will third Wild Swans.

I will also third Night because it's another one that's been on my bookshelf for awhile.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

This nomination sounds very interesting, but I unfortunately passed on supporting it because of its length. I'm usually all for whatever length nomination so long as I'm interested but at, it seems, almost a thousand pages, Team of Rivals would be one of our longest selections yet - which is all good except that, after a slate of other longer selections recently between both clubs, the prospect this month seems a bit...daunting!

Yep.. It's a big book. But it's a big story.

Looks like there isn't much interest in the book anyway.

[sun surfer]

I'll fourth Night.

[sqdancer]

I'll fourth Wild Swans.

[paola]

I will fourth Homage to Catalonia.

With my two remaining nominations, I throw in two titles more to remind myself that I want to read them than for a real chance, as it is really late, but here I go, just in case :

How we survived communism and even laughed , by Slavenka Drakulić, is a recollection of life under communism in what was at the time Yugoslavia. From goodreads:

Hailed by feminists as one of the most important contributions to women's studies in the last decade, this gripping, beautifully written account describes the daily struggles of women under the Marxist regime in the former republic of Yugoslavia.

Lastly, I will nominate Memoirs of a dutiful daughter, by Simone de Beauvoirs, hte french philosopher and novelist. Blurb from Goodreads:

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.

She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time