2014 memoir books biography

Despite never having heard the term "bibliomemoir" until it was used by one of her reviewers, Rebecca Mead still managed to write one of the best, The Road to Middlemarch (Granta, £). A beguiling mixture of literary criticism, biography and personal memoir, Mead writes intelligently and movingly about her "profound" and lifelong experience with George Eliot's classic text. A good novel is something to get lost in; but she explains, it's also somewhere to find oneself.

Dorothea Brooke is one of the few heroines Samantha Ellis doesn't mention in How to Be a Heroine: Or, what I've learned from reading too much (Chatto & Windus, £), a veritable feast of familiar figures – from Anne Shirley to Catherine Earnshaw. In a glorious celebration of the power of fiction, Ellis astutely traces everything she's learned about life, love and career (a surprising amount of the latter from Shirley Conran's famous Eighties bonkbuster Lace) to the stories that have seeped into her unconscious.

From the pleasures of reading to the tribulations of writing, Gary Shteyngart's memoir Little Failure (Penguin, £) is a captivating Bildungsroman that begins with the author as a runny-nosed asthmatic struggling for breath in Leningrad in the late Seventies before he and his parents move to America (and discover the magic of a steroid-based inhaler). Through the prism of his own family's experiences, Shteyngart tells a poignant story of a people torn between two cultures: "We Soviet Jews were simply invited to the wrong party. And then we were too frightened to leave. Because we didn't know who we were." As with all good Russian writing, there's an undercurrent of melancholy, but this is shot through with hilarity, and Shteyngart never takes himself too seriously.

The vulnerability Helen Macdonald shows in H is for Hawk (Jonathan Cape, £) is of a different nature. The winner of this year's Samuel Johnson Prize is one of the most captivating books I

Biographies are some of the most interesting books to read because they peek into the lives of other people. 

Amazon released the best biographies and memoirs of

From Lena Dunham's tell-all to Napoleon's personal letters, here are the best biographies and memoirs of

1. "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned'" by Lena Dunham: Dunham's book tackles life issues every woman can relate to, and includes everything from her first sexual experience to her obsession with death. "If I can take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you," Dunham writes, "or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine will have been worthwhile.”

2. "Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir" by Roz Chast: Cartoonist Roz Chast writes about the difficulty of going from child of your parents to caretaker of your parents. Chast, an only child, details the years leading up to the deaths of her parents and how she coped with trading the family home for an institution, managing her parents' care, and saying goodbye.  

3. "Napoleon: A Life" by Andrew Roberts: Roberts brings new life to the legendary leader Napoleon. He is the first to use Napoleon's recently found 33, letters which reveal a lot about his character and his relationships with his wife, friends, and enemies. Roberts visited nearly all of Napoleon's 60 battle sites and made the trip to St. Helena, where Napoleon lived in exile, to gain further insight into this complex ruler. 

4. "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League" by Jeff Hobbs: Hobbs was the roommate and friend of Robert Peace while at Yale University. Peace was exce

After the year&#;s best reads in science, children&#;s books, psychology and philosophy, and art, design, and photography, here come the finest memoirs, biographies, and history books of the year &#; our most inviting bridge between past and present, personal and universal.

1. A LIFE WORTH LIVING

&#;To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,&#;Albert Camus wrote in his page philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus in &#;Everything else … is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.&#; One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity&#;s most enduring philosophical challenges &#; the impulse at the heart of Seneca&#;s meditations on life and Montaigne&#;s timeless essays and Maya Angelou&#;s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.

In the beautifully titled and beautifully written A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning (public library | IndieBound), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus&#;s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his &#;yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,&#; and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy:

If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest. Our pursuit of meaning, and the consequences should we come up empty-handed, are matters of eternal immediacy.

[&#;]

Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy &#; the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world &#; less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase.

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The Goodreads Choice Awards have three rounds of voting open to all registered Goodreads members. Winners will be announced December 03,

Opening Round: Nov 04 - 09

Voting opens to 15 official nominees, and write-in votes can be placed for any eligible book (see eligibility below).

Semifinal Round: Nov 11 - 16

The top five write-in votes in each of the categories become official nominees. Additional write-ins no longer accepted.

Final Round: Nov 18 - 25

The field narrows to the top 10 books in each category, and members have one last chance to vote!

Books published in the United States in English, including works in translation and other significant rereleases, between November 17, , and November 15, , are eligible for the Goodreads Choice Awards. Books published between November 16, , and November 15, , will be eligible for the awards.

We analyze statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads to nominate 15 books in each category. Opening round official nominees must have an average rating of or higher at the time of launch. Write-in votes may be cast for eligible books with any average rating, and write-in votes will be weighted by the book's Goodreads statistics to determine the top five books to be added as official nominees in the Semifinal Round. A book may be nominated in no more than one genre category, but can also be nominated in the Debut Novel category. Only one book in a series may be nominated per category. An author may receive multiple nominations within a single category if he or she has more than one eligible series or more than one eligible stand-alone book. Learn more