I have to admit, I haven’t read many, but a personal favorite is Stand Before Your God: An American Schoolboy in England by Paul Watkins. I’ve always been facinated with British culture, and reading about someone going through the same awkwardness and troubles as I did growing up really struck a chord. Does anyone else have any favorites?
Rousseau’s Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire
This book isn’t really a memoir of his whole life, but rather a set of ten essays on different reminiscences Rousseau had. Some of them are about past projects, former places of residence, people he knew, etc. My favorite is the Dixième Promenade, which is an essay about a woman, Madame de Warens, with whom he had a love affair when he was about 17 and she was 28. He wrote this essay about 50 years later, and he describes how they met, the great and lasting influence she had on his life, and the high esteem in which he continued to hold her, even though she eventually got tired of him and dumped him for another man. It’s a sad, sweet little piece, and the French is just so beautiful I could cry.
Gosh darn that’s one of my all-time favorite books. I think I’ll go home and start rereading it tonight.
Memoirs of the Second World War
It’s a little biased, insanely long ,and terribly boring once Britain doesn’t have a major role in the war, but is, by and by, the most complete account of the war as a whole that I have ever come across.
I always liked Harpo Speaks!.