Books like

Books like Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

12 books with a reading profile close to Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. Inward-looking and contemplative; a moderate read.

1

Persepolis, Volume 1

by Marjane Satrapi

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel chronicles her childhood in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War.
2

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Fourteen-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr., a budding cartoonist born with physical vulnerabilities, lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation where poverty and alcoholism are pervasive.
3

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

by Marina Keegan

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

The collection compiles fiction and non-fiction written by Marina Keegan before her death just days after graduating from Yale.
4

Beautiful Country

by Qian Julie Wang

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Qian Julie Wang was seven when she and her parents left China for New York in 1994, where her mother and father, a former professor and a professional, became undocumented workers.
5

Brown Girl Dreaming

by Jacqueline Woodson

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir, written in verse, chronicles her childhood across the 1960s and 1970s.
6

Solutions and Other Problems

by Allie Brosh

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Allie Brosh uses crude digital illustrations and humorous vignettes to document her life after a long public absence.
7

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

by Maggie O'Farrell

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

This memoir documents seventeen instances where Maggie O’Farrell narrowly escaped death.
8

Shantaram

by Gregory David Roberts

memoir, narrative

Lin Ford, a convicted bank robber, escapes an Australian prison and flees to Mumbai, India, where he reinvents himself within the city’s complex social tiers.
9

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

by John Steinbeck

memoir, narrative

In 1960, John Steinbeck drove a custom-built camper truck named Rocinante across nearly forty states to reconnect with the country he felt he no longer understood.
10

Priestdaddy

by Patricia Lockwood

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Patricia Lockwood, a poet, moves back with her husband into her parents' house in a Kansas City rectory.
11

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

by Kate Beaton

Also contemplative · memoir, narrative

Kate Beaton chronicles her time working manual labor jobs at remote mining camps in northern Alberta to pay off her student loans.
12

Yossarian slept here

by Erica Heller

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Erica Heller’s memoir documents her upbringing as the daughter of Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, within the Apthorp apartment building in Manhattan.

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