Author Memoir Reading List and Book Club

I love reading craft technique books, but I am getting to that point where they don’t go as far as they used to. I follow several writers, authors, and creative thinkers who all have a habit of reading creator or author memoirs. What the method does is teach you how to think like a novelist and incorporate practices and habits that go beyond simple techniques to tell a good story.

The way authors create and think is a technique in itself. When I explain a story idea’s life and creation to another writer and vice versa, there’s always small amazement how the connections happen.

When most people talk about author memoirs or craft memoirs, they always talk about On Writing by Stephen King. It’s a short book that talks about the rise of the King of Horror and what he’s learned along the way. The problem is, King thinks like a basic white guy. There aren’t many “revelations” or knockout moments in the book.

That isn’t to say the book isn’t a thrill to read, like all accounts of a writer making it big—it’s inspiring, but it’s not helpful. A part of me thinks it’s because he tried to make it helpful without thinking about the people he was and would be helping.

But what do I know?

Well, I know what I liked and what helped me:

The craft memoir that helped me the way On Writing is portrayed as helping others was Charles Johnston’s Way of the Writer. That taught me how to LIVE as a writer. There were craft techniques embedded, but more than anything it talked about how to be a decent person and writer while making your life in a creative world.

The Writing Skins Author Memoir Book Club

Have you wanted a low pressure book club that exposes you to new authors and thinkers? Is there any part of you that’s always wanted to know how Murakami wound up those birds? Or how Bradbury illustrated a man while crafting a whole country for October??

Let’s explore these writers and more and how they crafted their careers, novels, and characters. Us together, reading through the lives of authors we love, hate, and admire. Then talking about what fascinated us, what changed us. This bookclub is organized on my Writing Skins newsletter. To join it, please subscribe!

My hope is that together we can learn and discuss some fun and interesting things about authors who have written stories we love or hated. And maybe it’ll help me and some people see the world in a new way.

The list of memoirs so far:

1. Write Away by Elizabeth George
2. I, Asimov by Issac Asimov
3. In Memory Yet Green by Issac Asimov
4. In Joy Still Felt by Issac Asimov
5. Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
6. Books by Larry McMurty
7. Sailor and Fiddler by Herman Wouk
8. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
9. The Motion of Light in Water by Samuel R Delaney
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf
12. Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan
13. Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
14. Tibetan Peach Pie by Tom Robbins
15. A Life in Letters by Zora Neale Houston
16. Conversations with Octavia Butler
17. 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams By: Douglas Adams
18. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
19. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
20. Listen to the Echoes by Ray Bradbury
21. Bradbury Speaks by Ray Bradbury
22. The Successful Novelist by David Morrell
23. Wish I Was Here by M John Harrison
24. Working Days by John Steinbeck
25. Conversations on Writing by Ursula K Le Guin
26. It Came from Ohio by RL Stine
27. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
28. The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae
29. Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo
30. Travels with Charley: In Search of Americaby John Steinbeck

I originally came up with this idea of an author’s memoir book club before I started my MFA program. Then that took over most of my life outside work and social time. Now that grad school is coming to an end, I’ve restarted this book club with a select number of the titles from the list above.

Head over to my newsletter to see what books we’ve read so far and which ones are next.

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If you’re interested in joining the author memoir book club, subscribe to Writing Skins. As of right now the book club is free to join and participate though some bookish posts will be paywalled!