Read On...Life Stories: Reading Lists for Every Taste (Read On Series) - Softcover

Reisner, Rosalind

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591587662 ISBN 13: 9781591587668

Publisher: Libraries Unlimited, 2009

Synopsis

Scores of appeal-based reading lists cover topics you'll never find in the library catalog―from extraordinary women and overcoming adversity to sports talk, spiritual journeys, and luminous prose.

With the genre of memoirs filled with so many titles and from such a variety of authors, it is hard to grasp what's available and what's worth reading. For all those who love delving into the lives of others, this Read On… volume offers help.

Read On…Life Stories: Reading Lists for Every Taste offers brief descriptions of nearly 450 published memoirs, from classics like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, to recent bestsellers like John Grogan's Marley and Me and Julie Andrews' Home. Titles are grouped together by their appeal to readers, and there is something for everyone: humorous memoirs, thrilling adventure stories, chatty celebrity reminiscences, cathartic dramas of family dysfunction, fascinating career retrospectives, and insightful stories of family and personal lives in many eras and places.

About this title

About the Author

ROSALIND REISNER has worked in public, academic, special, and school libraries for over 25 years. She is currently the Program Coordinator at Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative in Freehold, New Jersey, and serves on the Editorial Board of Judaica Librarianship, published by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She writes and speaks about synagogue library management, collection development, and readers' advisory services.

Reviews

Who sits around and reads a bibliography? Unlikely as it seems, pretty much anyone who picks up this entry in the Read On . . . series. For all those who enjoy reading memoirs, the 450 cogent annotations in this collection offer a wealth of options. The book is divided into five sections by defining characteristic—“Character,” “Story,” “Setting,” “Language,” and “Mood”—and more specific subsections further narrow the type of memoir. Categories include “Passage to Adulthood: Coming-of-Age Memoirs,” “Dishing: Stories from the Kitchen,” and “Taking It on Faith: Spiritual Journeys.” The recommended authors range from the absolutely classic (Mark Twain) to the contemporary (Augusten Burroughs), and all are annotated in stylish, attention-grabbing prose that could sell pretty much any book. Like others in the series, this is a readers’-advisory title that could be handed off to patrons to browse on their own—if you can get it away from the librarian. With both a detailed table of contents and an excellent index, this is a must-have tool for public libraries. --Ann Welton

Edition details

• Publisher: Libraries Unlimited
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591587662
• ISBN 13: 9781591587668
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 196