Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way. With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life in this poignant and honest autobiography. More than a rock star, he is an icon, a living embodiment of the... (more)

Born on a Blue Day

by Daniel Tammet

One of the world's fifty living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story---and explain how his incredible mind works.

Go Ask Alice

by Beatrice Sparks

January 24th After you've had it, there isn't even life without drugs.... It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life. ... (more)

Not Without My Daughter

by Betty Mahmoody

'You are here for the rest of your life. Do you understand? You are not leaving Iran. You are here until you die.' Betty Mahmoody and her husband, Dr Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody ('Moody'), came to Iran from the USA to meet Moody's family. With them was their four-year-old daughter, Mahtob. Appalled by the squalor of their living conditions, horrified by what she saw of a country where women are merely chattels and... (more)

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter

by Adeline Yen Mah

Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith... (more)

Iacocca: An Autobiography

by Lee Iacocca, William Novak

He’s an American legend, a straight-shooting businessman who brought Chrysler back from the brink and in the process became a media celebrity, newsmaker, and a man many had urged to run for president. The son of Italian immigrants, Lee Iacocca rose spectacularly through the ranks of Ford Motor Company to become its president, only to be toppled eight years later in a power play that should have shattered him. But... (more)

Dry.

A Memoir

by Augusten Burroughs

From the bestselling author of Running with Scissors comes Dry —the hilarious, moving, and no less bizarre account of what happened next. You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants: a twenty-something guy, nice suit, works in advertising. Regular. Ordinary. But when the ordinary person had to drinks, Augusten was circling the... (more)

Scar Tissue

by Anthony Kiedis, Larry Sloman

Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller by one of rock’s most provocative figures Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis’s searingly honest memoir of a life spent in the fast lane. In 1983, four self-described "knuckleheads" burst out of the mosh-pitted mosaic of the neo-punk rock scene in L.A. with their own unique brand of cosmic hardcore mayhem funk. Over twenty years later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers,... (more)

Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together

Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together

by Ron Hall

Meet Denver, a man raised under plantation-style slavery in Louisiana in the 1960s ; a man who escaped, hopping a train to wander, homeless, for eighteen years on the streets of Dallas, Texas. No longer a slave, Denver's life was still hopeless-until God moved. First came a godly woman who prayed, listened, and obeyed. And then came her husband, Ron, an international arts dealer at home in a world of... (more)

Miley

by Destiny Hope Cyrus

For the first time ever, fans of Miley Cyrus will get a chance to hear her story. Covering everything from her Southern roots in Tennessee to her meteoric triumphs in television, music, and film, this is the must-have book for any fan of the teen sensation. With humour, heart, and honesty, Miley will talk about her family, friends, life on the road, and how she navigates the ups and downs of living in the... (more)

The Heart of a Woman (Oprah's Book Club)

The Heart of a Woman (Oprah's Book Club)

by Maya Angelou

In The Heart of a Woman Maya Angelou leaves California with her son, Guy, to go to New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists and writers. Not since her childhood has she lived in an almost black environment, and she is surprised at the obsession her new friends have with the white world around them. She stays for a while with John and Grace Killens and begins to read her writing at the... (more)

All Things Bright and Beautiful

by James Herriot

"A very warm, very engaging read. . . . The reader falls totally under his spell." -- Associated Press The second volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series Millions of readers have delighted in the wonderful storytelling and everyday miracles of James Herriot in the over thirty years since his delightful animal stories were first introduced to the world. Now in a new edition for the first time in... (more)

Living History

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

The Phenomenal #1 Worldwide Bestseller WITH A NEW AFTERWORD Hillary Rodham Clinton is known to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Yet few beyond her close friends and family have ever heard her account of her extraordinary journey. She writes with candor, humor and passion about her upbringing in suburban, middle-class America in the 1950s and her transformation from Goldwater Girl to student... (more)

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Vintage)

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Vintage)

by Kay R. Jamison, Kay Redfield Jamison

The personal memoir of a manic depressive and an authority on the subject describes the onset of the illness during her teenage years and her determined journey through the realm of available treatments. Reprint. 125,000 first printing. NYT.

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

by Anthony Bourdain

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door.In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded that appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectable shocking banquet that lays out his 25 years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine. From his first oyster in the Gironde to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop... (more)

Mao's Last Dancer

by Li Cunxin

From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting... (more)

All Things Wise and Wonderful/the Lord God Made Them All

All Things Wise and Wonderful/the Lord God Made Them All

by James Herriot

The third volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series Readers adored James Herriot's tales of his life as a Yorkshire animal doctor in All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Bright and Beautiful. Now here's a third delightful volume of memoirs rich with Herriot's own brand of humor, insight, and wisdom. In the midst of World War II, James is training for the Royal Air Force, while going home... (more)

Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor Emil Frankl, VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot... (more)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

A Memoir of Life in Death

by Jean-Dominique Bauby

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle , the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him... (more)

Shantaram

by Gregory David Roberts

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured." So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Browse Subjects: autobiography

Top Books

by Eric Clapton

by Daniel Tammet

by Beatrice Sparks

by Betty Mahmoody

by Adeline Yen Mah

by Lee Iacocca, William Novak

A Memoir

by Augusten Burroughs

by Anthony Kiedis, Larry Sloman

by Ron Hall

by Destiny Hope Cyrus

by Maya Angelou

by James Herriot

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

by Kay R. Jamison, Kay Redfield Jamison

by Anthony Bourdain

by Li Cunxin

by James Herriot

by Viktor Emil Frankl, VIKTOR E. FRANKL

A Memoir of Life in Death

by Jean-Dominique Bauby

by Gregory David Roberts