The following titles are available in sets of approximately fifteen copies; sometimes more. Those with an asterisk * have a study guide to accompany the title. Please call (801) 359-9670 to check availability. We invite you to select books from the following themes. (Some titles may be found in more than one category.)

Intimate Stories: Memoir

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook - (Alice B. Toklas, 1954) A collection of stories of meals shared with famous friends such as Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway, with recipes and memories of wartime in Paris.  Toklas’s long association with Gertrude Stein is well known;  less well known is her extraordinary skill with food.  James Beard called her “one of the really great cooks of all time.”  A culinary treat! 
                                                                                                                                             
* Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir - (Frank McCourt, 1996) McCourt’s account of his parents’ return to Ireland from New York when he was four chronicles a childhood through extreme poverty and “swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor…a work of lasting beauty.”

* Autobiography of a Yogi - (Paramahansa Yogananda, 1946, 1998) Yogananda, a recognized saint, takes us into the world of yogis, enlightenment, meditation, and miracles.  He reveals his life with saints (Therese Neumann), poets (Nobel laureate Tagore), and world leaders (Mahatma Gandhi and President Wilson). “Yoga” means “union with the divine” and is an ancient science, not a religion.  With candor and humor, Yogananda shares details of his remarkable childhood, training with a yoga master, and thirty years of teaching in America.  He discloses his human foibles and emotions, showing us that everyone, regardless of gender or religion, can realize our oneness with the divine and become yogis or yoginis.  Translated into eighteen languages, this classic on Eastern mysticism is used as a text by many colleges and universities.

* Balm in Gilead, Journey of a Healer - (Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1988) The author recounts the extraordinary life of her mother, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, one of the first African-American women to graduate from Cornell University and Columbia University School of Medicine. This book captures both the life of an inspiring woman and the social, cultural, historical, and psychological forces that shaped the destinies of four generations of African-American women and their families.

Bread Givers - (Anzia Yezierska, 1925) Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, watches as her father marries off her sisters to men they don’t love. But Sara rejects this conception of Jewish womanhood. She wants to live for herself and to marry for love. Set during the 1029’s on New York’s Lower East Side, the story of Sara’s struggle toward independence and self-fulfillment - through education, work, and love – is universal and resonates with a passionate intensity that all can share.

* Burning the Days: Recollection - (James Salter, 1997) James Salter commemorates his life with a precision of thought and language that is at once clarifying and intoxicating. His descriptions of attending a military academy, flying in the Korean War, learning about the naivete of a mistress, making movies, or relishing the smile of a girl in a skimpy dress in a Roman café – they are all made by an incomparable observer and storyteller. Weaving the recollections of time, desire, pleasure, and regret, Salter creates an unforgettable memoir.

* Catfish & Mandala - (Andrew X. Pham, 1999) In a search for cultural identity and personal history, Vietnamese-American Pham sets out on a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam.

* The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother - (James McBride, 1996)  As an adult, McBride finally persuaded his mother to tell her story as a rabbi’s daughter, born in Poland and raised in the South, who fled to Harlem, married a black man, founded a Baptist church, and put twelve children through college. McBride’s tribute to his remarkable, eccentric, determined mother is also an eloquent exploration of what family really means.

Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood - (Fatima Mernissi, 1994) In an exotic and rich narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem, Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth, women who, deprived of access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer imagination.  A provocative story of a girl confronting the mysteries of time and place, gender and sex in the recent Muslim world.

Eating in America: A History - (Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont, 1976) The story of American eating begins and ends with the fact that American food, by most of the world’s standards, is not very good. This is a rather sad note considering the “land of plenty” the first American settlers found, and even sadder considering that with the vast knowledge of food we possess, we have still managed to create things such as the TV dinner and “Finger Lickin’ Good” chicken. Nevertheless, America’s eating habits, the philosophy behind these habits, and much of the food itself are deliciously fascinating. Wavery Root and Richard de Rochemont, in a style that is rich, tasty, and ironic, chronicle the history of American food and eating customs from the time of the earliest explorers to the present.

* The Hemingway Book of Kosovo - (Paula Huntly, 2004) One year after the 1999 NATO bombings, an American woman accompanied her husband to Prishtina, Kosovo.  Paula Huntley ended up teaching English to a group of Kosovo Albanian refugees and formed an American-style book club with them to study Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm - (Davis Mas Masumoto, 1996) An eloquent, humorous memoir of one critical year in the life of an organic peach farmer.  Masumoto reflects on saving a family and a way of life, and the market values that threaten both. An author with “a farmer’s calluses and a poet’s soul.”

* Fierce Attachments, A Memoir - (Vivian Gornick, 1987) Gornick “takes her readers deep into that primitive no-man’s-land where mothers and daughters struggle, separate, reconcile, try to talk, try to understand and, sometimes, devour one another alive,” according to The Boston Globe.

* Growing Up - (Russell Baker, 1982) Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for biography/autobiography, this is Russell Baker’s story of growing up in America between the world wars. It is a story of adversity and courage, of the poignancy of love and the awkwardness of sex, of family bonds and family tensions. We meet the people who influenced Baker’s early life, and the everyday heroes and heroines of the Depression who faced disaster with good cheer and usually muddled through.

* Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam - (Lynda Van Devanter, 2001) A suspenseful autobiography that gives a painfully honest look at war through a woman’s eyes. Feel the fatigue, rain, mud, heat and personal danger that Van Devanter felt as she is assigned to an evacuation hospital near the Cambodian border.

How to Cook a Wolf - (MFK Fisher, 1942) If you love to read and love to cook (or have to cook), you will relish How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher.  Written in 1942 to inspire courage in those daunted by wartime shortages, the book has become a classic.   It is a memoir, a cookbook, and a commentary on the war, sprinkled liberally with delicious quotations about food from Emerson, Thackeray, Tolstoy and others.   Fisher wrote over a dozen books, most of them focused on the art of cooking and eating.  During the bleak years of World War II, rather than counsel hungry people on cutting back and making do, she gave her readers license to dream, to construct adventurous meals, even with simple ingredients, that would feed the spirit as much as the body. 

* Hunger of Memory, An Autobiography: The Education of Richard Rodriguez - (Richard Rodriguez, 1982) Here is the poignant story of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation – from his past, his parents, his culture – and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - (Maya Angelou, 1970) Writer and actress Maya Angelou gives a glimpse of her upbringing and rise out of poverty in the segregated south during the 1930's.

* The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty - (Carolyn G. Heilbrun, 1997) At the advent of her seventieth birthday, Heilbrun realized that her golden years had been full of unforeseen pleasures. The astute and ever-insightful Heilbrun muses on the emotional and intellectual insights that brought her “to choose each day for now, to live.” Even the encroachments of loss, pain, and sadness that come with age cannot spoil Heilbrun’s moveable feast.

Left to Tell - (Immaculee Ilibagiza, 2006) grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friendship - (Sharon Boorstin, 2002) Sometimes, the smallest things – the aroma of cookies baking, the feel of dough in one’s hands – can trigger poignant food memories. For food writer and restaurant critic Sharon Boorstin, it was the discovery of a long lost notebook of recipes she’d collected from her mother, relatives, and friends that inspired her to reconnect with the loved ones of her past. As she reached out to the recipe givers – many of whom she hasn’t seen in years – she uncovered and embraced the power of cooking and food in establishing bonds among women. Let Us Eat Cake celebrates these connections. With dozens of delicious recipes and vintage photos, this moving book will inspire readers to remember and cherish their own experiences with food, family, and friends.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez - (John Steinbeck, 1951) Steinbeck and biologist Edward F. Ricketts board the Western Flyer, a sardine boat and head out of Monterey, California, on a 4,000-mile journey into the Sea of Cortez. A great book that helps understand Steinbeck and his beliefs about man and the world, combined with adventure, philosophy and science.

* I Married Adventure - (Osa Johnson, 1997) “The essence of this story is that two people, very much in love, followed their dreams, living a life full of risks and far from the comforts of home. Yet this story of their adventures more than sixty years ago will thrill a reader [of today].”—Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum. The book contains many dramatic photos by these two who traveled the world making popular movies.  

* Max Perkins: Editor of Genius - (A. Scott Berg, 1978) A meticulously-researched and engaging portrait of the man who introduced the public to the greatest literary writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe.  Perkins was tirelessly committed to nurturing talent no matter how young or unproven the writer.      

My Year of Meats -(Ruth L. Ozeki, 1998) An American TV producer meets a beleaguered Japanese housewife in this mesmerizing debut novel that has captivated readers worldwide.  Newsweek describes the novel as “a sexy and funny cross-cultural tale of two seemingly disparate women that is a feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next.” 

* Night - (Elie Wiesel, 1960) A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God.  Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

* Night Flight - (Antoine De Saint-Exupery) In this gripping, beautifully written novel, Saint-Exupery tells about the brave men who pilot night mail planes from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation.  They are impelled to perform their routine acts of heroism by a steely chief named Riviere, whose extraordinary character is revealed through the dramatic events of a single night.

Nobody’s Son: Notes From an American Life - (Luis Alberto Urrea,1998) Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother from Staten Island, Urrea had a childhood full of opposites, a clash of cultures and languages. In prose that seethes with energy and crackles with dark humor, Urrea tells a story that is both troubling and wildly entertaining.

* Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion - (Leona Rostenberg & Madeleine B. Stern, 1998) Here's a book about two forthright women who share a passion for literature and who know the true meaning of a lifelong friendship.

* Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass - (Isak Dinesen, 1937, 1960) This one volume contains both Out of Africa, the well-loved story of Isak Dinesen’s struggle on her coffee plantation in Kenya and additional stories and reminiscences about Africa gathered under the title Shadows on the Grass. The author’s poetic images and language make her book a delight to read.

1185 Park Avenue, a Memoir - (Anne Roiphe, 1999) While the nation was at war abroad, Roiphe, who was coming of age in 1940’s New York City, saw her parents at war in their living room. Roiphe’s evocative writing puts readers right in Apartment 8C, where a constant tension plays out between a disappointed and ineffectual mother, a philandering father who uses his wife’s money to entertain other women, and a difficult brother. Behind the leisure culture of wealthy Jewish society lurks a brutality that strikes a chord with a daughter who longs to heal the wounds of her troubled family.

* Patrimony - (Philip Roth, 1991) This true story touches the emotions as strongly as anything Roth has ever written.  He watches as his eighty-six-year-old father--famous for his vigor, his charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections--battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety, and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father’s long, stubborn engagement with life.   

Prairie Reunion - (Barbara J. Scott, 1995) Part memoir, part social and cultural history, part ecological exploration, Prairie Reunion takes writer Barbara Scot to Scotch Grove, Iowa, the small farming community of her childhood where she succeeds in coming to terms with her parents' legacy, a bittersweet history that involves love, abandonment, and suicide. 

* Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore - (Suzanne Stempek Shea, 2004) Shea works at a book store in Springfield Massachusetts, but really she is a novelist, and her memoir shows it as she describes the customers, their requests and reactions, and her thoughts on it all.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading - (Sara Nelson, 2003) The interplay between our lives and our books is the subject of this unique memoir.  From Solzhenitsyn to Laura Zigman, Catherine M. to Captain Underpants, the result is a personal chronicle of insight, wit, and enough infectious enthusiasm to make a passionate reader out of anybody.

* Something to Declare: Essays - (Julia Alvarez, 1998) As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Alvarez reflects on her life before the United States, her assimilation to the Americanized culture. Alvarez eloquently depicts her love of writing and family, and offers insight into what it means to have a place.

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family - (Patricia Volk, 2001) Patricia Volk’s delicious memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, and infuriating family, where you’re never just hungry – you’re starving to death; and you’re never just full - you’re stuffed. Volk’s family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced pastrami to America until 1988, when her father closed his garment center restaurant. But as seductively as Volk evokes this food, Stuffed is at heart a funny, fresh, and profoundly moving paean to family.

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World - (Lawrence Goldstone & Nancy Goldstone, 1997) The idea that books had stories associated with them that had nothing to do with the stories inside them was new to the Goldstones.  Journey into the world of book collecting where you can begin to appreciate that there is a history and a world of ideas embodied by the books themselves.

* The Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China - (Jung Chang, 1991) This mesmerizing memoir is a riveting account of the impact of history on the lives of women. A powerful, moving, at times shocking story of three generations of Chinese women, as compelling as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

* Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey - (Lillian Schlissel, 1992) More than a quarter million Americans crossed the continental U.S. between 1840 and 1870.  Men of the frontier have become an integral part of history and folklore, but pioneering was a family matter, and the experiences of American women are central to an accurate picture of what life was like on the frontier. These chronicles of women show an absorbing and informative aspect of the westward saga.

* West With the Night - (Beryl Markham, 1983) Beryl Markham records memoirs and stories of her flights to Africa.

Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change - (Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, 1988) This collection of previously unpublished documents, essays, stories, life histories, poems, and reports constitute progress report on the status of women and the family in the modern Middle East. Men and women articulate their problems and perceptions in their own terms, not those of the western journalist or development specialist.

* The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - (Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976) This book documents Kingston’s search for identity as a Chinese-American growing up in San Francisco, as well as her triumphs in blending two cultures to create meaning.

A Year in Provence - (Peter Mayle,1989) A book as much about dreams and seasons as about place, Peter Mayle’s story of moving into a 200-year old stone farmhouse in a remote area of Provence is a delight.  Follow the movement of the seasons in a culture that has not forgotten how to live in tune with its surroundings, relishing truffles in winter, and tarte au citron in June, Mayle’s tale is light-hearted, and  funny.  It will have you longing for a trip to France yourself. 

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