If you love a good memoir, this list of memoirs for summer reading is for you.
I recently finished reading the memoir Strangers. I then quickly picked up a memoir I bought on my recent vacation to Oregon. I can easily say I love a good memoir.
I know many readers also love to read memoirs, so I thought it would be fun to put together a list of memoirs that would make great summer reading.
This list of memoirs includes books about books, food, adventures, travel, and more.
If you love to read memoirs as much as I do, I hope you find one to add to your summer to be read stack.
Memoirs For Summer
Ordinary Time by Annie B. Jones is a great book for summer because it is easy to pick up and put down. It is a book of essays by Anne B. Jones, owner of The Bookshelf in Thomasville, Georgia, and host of the From the Front Porch Podcast.
Ordinary Life is Annie’s story of living in a small town, owning a business, and so many other things.
Annie embraces her ordinary life by sharing it with us. The reality is that most of us live very ordinary lives, and that is perfectly fine.
Food For Thought by Alton Brown is a great memoir for fans of The Food Network.
I loved his chapters on comfort foods and on cooking a chicken, but my favorite is the one on Martha Stewart.
I loved this on audio, so if you need a nonfiction audiobook for summer, give this one a try.
Cabin by Patrick Hutchison is Patrick’s story of building his dream escape, a cabin the in woods of the Pacific Northwest.
The setting of this book drew me into it. But I also loved that this book reminded me of the importance of slowing down and unplugging from the world.
Fly Girl by Ann Hood is Ann’s memoir of being a flight attendant in the late 1970s and 1980s. This book is exactly why I love to read memoirs. It helped me experience a time and place that I really did not know anything about.
I loved this book so much that I read it in two days. I could not put this memoir down.
I think this one is a great summer read because it is all about the world of travel.
Downton Shabby by Hopwood Dupree is a fun, quick, and easy nonfiction read for summer.
This book is the story of Hopwood DePree, a Hollywood producer, who gives it all up to save his family’s ancestral home in England.
This one is great for fans of DIY projects and HGTV shows.
My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg is a book of essays by Rick Bragg. If you love Rick Bragg’s writing about life in the South, I think you will enjoy this one.
Rick Bragg shares his love of the South and its people through stories of his life and upbringing there.
The audio on this one is so good because Rick Bragg narrates it.
Gone To the Woods by Gary Paulsen is the perfect summer read for fans of Gary Paulsen’s book Hatchet.
Gone To the Woods is more of an autobiography than a memoir. Gary Paulsen doesn’t just share a short part of his life; he shares his childhood, teen years, and more in this book.
He had a difficult life, and he shares it in an honest way. In this book, he takes you on all kinds of adventures, starting with life on his aunt and uncle’s farm to living overseas in the Philippines after WWII. It covers his difficult adolescent years and how a library and librarian helped change his life, and so much more.
Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin was published in 1988. If you love books about food and cooking, and grew up in the 1980s, I think you will enjoy this one.
I loved this book because it reminded me that simple can be delicious and that entertaining can be fun, even when it doesn’t go as planned.
I couldn’t share a list of memoirs without including one of my all time favorite memoirs.
84 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff was published in 1970. It is a backlist book that is just as good today as it was when it was published.
This book is a love story, but not a typical love story. It is the story of the friendship of people who love and cherish books and bookstores.
If you love books about books and have not read this one, I highly recommend it.
Do you have a great memoir to recommend for summer reading?