Amazon’s 100 Biographies & Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime
Lists of books are popular features.
It’s interesting to me that that is the case.
After all, I doubt I’ve ever seen a list where I didn’t think there were omissions and questionable inclusions.
Perhaps that’s the point.
They spark a reaction, and reactions can mean engagement…and engagement can mean purchasing.
Not all lists are about purchasing, of course, and even an Amazon list of books like the brand new
100 Biographies & Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
isn’t about immediate conversion of sales.
In some ways, it’s about Amazon’s positioning as knowledgeable about books…knowledgeable and credible, which are not synonyms. You can be knowledgeable and have no one believe you (ask Cassandra), and you can be credible without having a lot of knowledge on a topic.
When I’ve trained trainers, I’ve even taught the latter…how to be credible.
A few quick notes on that:
- Use numbers…that always impresses people. For example, if I was teaching an Excel class many years ago, I could be in front of people who thought they knew Excel quite well. I could say (back then), “There are 256 columns in Excel…does anyone know how many rows? 65,536.” That gave me instant credibility…even if it was just a memorized fact. It doesn’t have to be a complicated number: “There were seven castaways on Gilligan’s Island.” That may get people counting to confirm…and when they do, they are impressed with you
- When in doubt, use big words. That also makes you sound credible…not approachable or relatable, necessarily, but it does help with credibility. :) That’s only true if you use them correctly…well, if somebody knows what the word actually means, that is. I have to reset my reaction when someone uses the word “decimated” (often “absolutely decimated” or “completely decimated”) to indicate a nearly complete reduction. “Decimated” technically means “reduced by one tenth”. If there were 100 soldiers, and you reduced it to ninety, you decimated that group. At least, that’s what it used to mean…my now adult kid who is a linguist has convinced me that it is usage that matters. I still have the emotional reaction, but I can reset it :)
- Use the jargon. I work with medical folks, and when I can use a word that they use appropriately, it really ups my credibility
- Speak quickly. Again, this is just when you are establishing credibility, not when you are training a concept. Most people don’t think you can lie at high speeds…that you have to think about what you are saying too much. If you excitedly say something, smashingallthewordstogether, people will think you are being honest. Don’t believe me? Try saying something really slowly and deliberately out loud…it will likely sound even to you like you are lying
- Be imperfect. Pause, use an “um”, look to the ceiling (up to the left, typically), laugh at yourself for what you just said…those can all make you seem genuine, and not rehearsed
Now, clearly, you can’t just follow techniques to gain credibility…you need to be reacting in the moment and have empathy for what your audience is feeling.
That said, I come across as credible in person…and it can be a problem for me.
I’ve been a boss.
I’ve said to people something like, “Now, I don’t know yet if this is going to happen, so don’t hold me to it, but it’s possible that we are going to xyz.” I’ve then had people telling others we were going to xyz, and saying, “Bufo said so.”
That means I have to be careful about what I say. :)
I was being observed by one of my favorite managers, and in debriefing a class, the manager said at one point, “Then you did that hypnosis thing you do,” and just went on to another point.
I said something like, “Wait, what? What hypnosis thing?”
I realized later that I do use something like “guided imagery”.
Never, by the way, for nefarious reasons!
It’s just as important and difficult (sometimes) to make people believe in something which is true and good for them as it is to make them believe in something which is false and bad for them.
That said, let’s talk about this list. :)
I do like biographies and memoirs, but I like a lot of things. ;)
Here’s the list from Amazon, and whether or not I’ve read them:
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers: no
- A Long Way Home by Ishmael Beah: yes
- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: no
- A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson: no
- American Caesar by William Manchester: no
- American Lion by Jon Meacham: no
- American Prometheus by Kai Bird: no
- American Sniper by Chris Kyle: no
- American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis: no
- Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt: no
- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: yes
- Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy: no
- Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain: yes
- Ball Four by Jim Bouton: no
- Black Boy by Richard Wright: no
- Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: yes
- Born Standing Up by Steve Martin: no
- Born to Run by Christopher McDougall: no
- Bossypants by Tina Fey: no
- Cash by Johnny Cash: no
- Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie: no
- Chronicles by Bob Dylan: no
- Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert: no
- Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose: no
- Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron: no
- De Profundis and Other Personal Writings by Oscar Wilde: no
- Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller: no
- Dorothy Parker by Marion Meade: no
- Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama: no
- Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp: no
- Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston: no
- E-Mc~2 by David Bodanis: no
- Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: no
- Endurance by Alfred Lansing: no
- Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill: no
- Helen Keller: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller: yes
- I Am Malala by mlala Yousafzai: no
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: no
- Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: no
- Just Kids by Patti Smith: no
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain: no
- Knock Wood by Candice Bergen: no
- Life by Keith Richards: no
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela: no
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: no
- Mortality by Christopher Hitchens: no
- My Life in France by Julia Child: no
- Naked by David Sedaris: no
- Napoleon by Andrew Roberts: no
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass: no
- Night by Elie Wiesel: no
- Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin: no
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac: no
- Open by Andre Agassi: no
- Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen: no
- Personal History by Katharine Graham: no
- Robert A. Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro: no
- Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs: no
- Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford: no
- Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand: no
- Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan: no
- Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov: no
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson: no
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: no
- Tennessee Williams by John Lahr: no
- The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone: no
- The Andy Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol: no
- The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein: no
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X: no
- The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll: no
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: no
- The Color of Water by James McBride: no
- The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman: no
- The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: no
- The Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin: no
- The Diary of Frida Kahlo by Carlos Fuentes: no
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls: no
- The Gulag Archipeligo by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: no
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: no
- The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans: no
- The Last Lone Inventor by Evan I. Schwartz: no
- The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr: no
- The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara: no
- The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester: no
- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris: no
- The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder: no
- The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer: no
- The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston: no
- The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion: no
- This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff: no
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow: no
- Touching the Void by Joe Simpson: no
- Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck: no
- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: no
- Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes: no
- Updike by Adam Begley: no
- Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff: no
- West with the Night by Beryl Markham: no
- Wild Swans by Jung Chang: no
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed: no
Well, I’ve only read five of these, but I have to say, I was very impressed with some of them. The Helen Keller book is amazing. A Long Way Home was devastating, but great. The Mark Twain book was so modern and so clever.
Certainly, though, there are many others I might list which I have read and which in some small way, let me live someone else’s life for a while.
Amazon knows that, and one of the synergies of their having purchased the social reading website Goodreads, is that they can do a curated list like the above and let people contribute to a crowd sourced one…which they have done:
You can vote on and add titles to that one.
Without at all claiming that they are the best, here are some other biographies/memoirs which come to mind for me:
- A Zoo in My Luggage by Gerald Durrell…and indeed, several of the Durrell books (not available for the Kindle)
- A Job for Superman by Kirk Alyn…Alyn was Superman in the serials, and this book has some great stories! I bought it from Alyn at a science fiction convention, and that may have colored my perception of it. :) Still, I remember some of the stories easily. There was one where Alyn is talking about a scene carrying, I think, Lois Lane out of a burning building down steps. “Action!” Runs down the steps, but they have to reshoot the scene (smoke or something). Another take. Another problem. Another take. Another take. Another take. Eventually, the director says, “Superman, you’re slowing down.” Alyn explains that the actor is heavy, and the director says something like, “Actor? You’re supposed to be carrying a dummy!” That was part of the perception of Alyn on set as being Superman. Two more. :) Superman is animated flying, but they are standing around (very common on a set). Alyn asks what is happening, and they say they are trying to figure out how Superman is going to take off. Alyn, who was a ballet dancer, says, “I can jump over the camera.” Well, this is a tall camera! They don’t believe their star, but Alyn does it. Alyn points out, amused, that Superman takes off from a ballet position. ;) The last one was when They did have to do a close up of Superman flying. What they did was build a chest plate with wires, and Alyn would lay in it with legs (and hips) held straight out. That’s right…the plate didn’t get to Alyn’s hips! Picture doing that for a minute or more while they did the shot. Better, lie down on a table with your hips off the edge and try it…
- Books by John A. Keel and Hans Holzer…very different people, very different writing style, sort of connected both writing about “paranormal” things. They are both field investigators and both bring you a feel for what it is like being there
- Philip Jose Farmer’s “mythographies” of Doc Savage (Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (at AmazonSmile*)) and Tarzan
I could keep going. :)
One last thing, so those of you with Kindle Unlimited can read biographies and memoirs at no additional cost as part of your membership:
Kindle Unlimited Biographies & Memoirs sorted by most reviewed (at AmazonSmile*)
Don’t have Kindle Unlimited yet? It’s worthy of consideration, in my opinion:
Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
What do you think? What are your favorite biographies and memoirs? I know people who say they don’t like to read non-fiction…what books do you think would convince them? These sorts of books also fit into Common Core…does this show the value of that program? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.
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Sling TV and Fire TV (at AmazonSmile*)
That’s the “cable cutting” way to get some TV networks at a cheaper price than paying for a full cable package.
Don’t want Sling TV? The Fire TV is also $15 off at time of writing, making it $84 instead of $99.
I use a Fire TV every day, and a Fire TV Stick some days.
Amazon Fire TV (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 
Shop ’til you help!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.
