Devon Book Club discussion

Today we are starting a new theme week - this time with a focus on biography, autobiography and memoir. I'd love to hear from writers in that genre so I can feature your books and from all of you about books that you'd recommend.

Here are a few that members have already started to suggest to me... a great range of writing to check out:

There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You by Lynda Bellingham
All My Wild Mothers: Motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden by Victoria Bennet
Speak, Memory by Nabakov
The Green Hill: Letters to a son by Sophie Pierce
Days in the Caucasus - by the Azerbaijani writer, Benine

Hello Ian, Thank you for this. I finished my memoir last year, but have not finished the edit yet. It's called CAN YOU SEE ME? I've explored my Italian heritage and how it affected my life as a child of immigrants. I will post when I finally get it published, through Feedaread.

Hi Ian,
Michael J. Fox's No Time Like the Future is an incredible memoir. I chose the audiobook, narrated by the author, and it was really inspiring; highly recommended.

Lyn wrote: "Hello Ian, Thank you for this. I finished my memoir last year, but have not finished the edit yet. It's called CAN YOU SEE ME? I've explored my Italian heritage and how it affected my life as a chi..."

Hi Lyn - lovely to hear from you - please do let us know and if you'd like me to feature the book I'd be delighted to do so.

Claire wrote: "Hi Ian,
Michael J. Fox's No Time Like the Future is an incredible memoir. I chose the audiobook, narrated by the author, and it was really inspiring; highly recommended."

Hi Claire - someone else mentioned that yesterday as well. It sounds like a moving book.

Our theme week got off to a great start yesterday with so many, varied recommendations. Our Twitter "hour" last evening was also very busy and so interesting. If yuo want to check that out just put #devonbookhour in the search engine. Here are some of the recommendations, a mixture of biography, autobiography and memoir:

Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Come Sail With Me
A Dutiful Boy
Maggie & Me - Damian Barr
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent
A Field Full of Butterflies: Memories of a Romany Childhood
Mallowan's Memoirs: Agatha and the Archaeologist
Yeats: The Man and the Masks

I was given a biography of Terry Pratchett for Christmas, written by his assistant, Rob Wilson. Terry Pratchett, A Life With Footnotes. Funny and sad. As a huge Pratchett fan I found it a great read, but even if you haven't read any of his books it's a fascinating look at a writer's life.

Ley wrote: "I was given a biography of Terry Pratchett for Christmas, written by his assistant, Rob Wilson. Terry Pratchett, A Life With Footnotes. Funny and sad. As a huge Pratchett fan I found it a great rea..."

Thanks Ley - that sounds like a fabulous book. I've never really engaged with Terry Pratchetts work - just didn't quite strike a chord with me but I know he is loved and admired by so many.

Continuing our theme of biography I'm delighted to shaer a book that has been recommended to us by one of our Twitter/X members. He acknowledges that the writer, Elizabeth Maslen, is his mother-in-law but we'll set that aside.

The book is called Life in the Writings of Storm Jameson: A Biography.

I had heard of Storm Jameson but confess I kknew little about her until I researched the book. It seems that there is something of a revival of interest in this remarkable woman.

Goodreads says this about the book:

Life in the Writings of Storm Jameson: A BiographyLife in the Writings of Storm Jameson: A Biography

Margaret Storm Jameson (1891–1986) is primarily known as a compelling essayist; her stature as a novelist and champion of the dispossessed is largely forgotten.

In Life in the Writings of Storm Jameson, Elizabeth Maslen reveals a figure who held her own beside fellow British women writers, including Virginia Woolf; anticipated the Angry Young Women, such as Doris Lessing; and was an early champion of such European writers as Arthur Koestler and Czesław Miłosz.

Jameson was a complex character whose politics were grounded in social justice; she was passionately antifascist—her novel In the Second Year (1936) raised the alarm about Nazism—but always wary of communism. An eloquent polemicist, Jameson was, as president of the British P.E.N. during the 1930s and 1940s, of invaluable assistance to refugee writers.

Elizabeth Maslen’s biography introduces a true twentieth century hedgehog, whose essays and subtly experimental fiction were admired in Europe and the States.

... Hedgehog? Please explain Ian !!???

Hi Ian,
Late to the party - as always!! I love biography (reading and writing it) and I am currently about 1/4 of the way through Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clarke. It's a massive tome, so it may take some time before I can give a decent review of it, but it is a stunningly 'good read' so far.
Kingsbridge Library 'Reading Group' read Plath's only novel - 'the Bell Jar' as our last read. It is a very 'autobiographical-seeming' work, so I was tempted to read a good biog of Plath and so far 'Red Comet' definitely fits the bill... but I will let you know more when I've finished. Our next book is 'Ivanhoe' by Sir Walter Scott, so Will let you know more of that...anon. DrMama.

DrMama wrote: "Hi Ian,
Late to the party - as always!! I love biography (reading and writing it) and I am currently about 1/4 of the way through [book:Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath|48..."

I'd love to hear more about the book. Sylvia Plath had such a fascinating but tragic life

Ian wrote: "DrMama wrote: "Hi Ian,
Late to the party - as always!! I love biography (reading and writing it) and I am currently about 1/4 of the way through [book:Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of ..."
Hi Ian, I will get back to you about the merits of 'Red Comet' when I've finished. It's a very big book, and given my other activities (including 'Ivanhoe' for Kingsbridge Read Group) it may take quite some time!

Also late to the party. I have finally finished writing 'I, Lafayette' a narrative non-fiction in the form of an autobiography. Lafayette recounts his life, tracing his path through three revolutions, the Napoleonic years and the Restoration. We see what he sees; we experience events as he experiences them; we know only what he knows. Factual, detailed, often dramatic, historically accurate, Lafayette's conversations, thoughts and actions are always referenced from original sources in English and French. The present tense ensures a vividness of time and place. It is history, but it is happening now.
A son of the wild Auvergne, Lafayette wants to follow in the footsteps of Vercingetorix who took up arms for the liberty of all. He sees Washington as his adopted father and the United States as his adopted country; in death he has his grave covered by earth from Bunker Hill.