I Brake for Memoirs!

Something dawned on me yesterday as I watched "House Hunters."..

..I haven't read a book since finishing Gone Girl (side note: O.Em.Gee. Most compelling/thrilling/frustrating book I have ever read!) over a month ago. Whhhaaaatttt...?

I have been on a bit of a magazine kick lately (my faves are HGTV Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, and Country Living) so that has been the majority of my nighttime reading. Don't get me wrong: magazines are great! But.. magazines cannot surprise, thrill, comfort, or entertain quite as much as a good book.

I'm a lover of memoirs and biographies so that's what I went searching for--and this is what I found!

I had never heard of A Lucky Child before but after reading the description (and tearing up), I knew it was a story that could not be passed up.

 Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir A LUCKY CHILD. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life. (Summary via Amazon)

I have heard nothing but good things about Sedaris' humorous memoir--I know I'm a little late to the Corduroy and Denim party (about 8 years late), but I can't wait to start it.

David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn't it? In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives -- a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today. (Summary via Amazon)

I have never known much about Chanel, nor have I ever owned any of her fashions/perfumes; but I figured that if I have a quote of hers on my page, I better educate myself (just reading the description makes me think I need to get a new quote.. I may have been better off just going with a Kurt Cobain quote!).

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was the high priestess of couture who created the look of the modern woman. By the 1920s she had amassed a fortune and went on to create an empire. But her life from 1941 to 1954 has long been shrouded in rumor and mystery, never clarified by Chanel or her many biographers. Hal Vaughan exposes the truth of her wartime collaboration and her long affair with the playboy Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage—who ran a spy ring and reported directly to Goebbels. Vaughan pieces together how Chanel became a Nazi agent, how she escaped arrest after the war and joined her lover in exile in Switzerland, and how—despite suspicions about her past—she was able to return to Paris at age seventy and rebuild the iconic House of Chanel. (Summary via Amazon)

Have you read any of these books? Can you recommend a good memoir? 

Also, I recently joined Goodreads. I still don't know what all I'm doing, but I'd love to be friends!