My top Ten stunt memoirs

              I just finished Marianne Power’s latest book Love Me about her quest to grow into herself as a woman. I enjoyed it just as much as I had her previous book, Help Me, in which she spent a year living according to the rules of twelve different self-help books with fascinating results. Stunt memoirs are some of my favorite non-fiction books to read and when my favorite authors publish a new one, I tend to jump up and down and clap my hands a bit. I only wish we could give them a different name as the word “stunt” makes them sound a bit unserious or maybe even frivolous. While some might be, my favorite books in the genre describe the author’s attempt to change their lives for the better and involve extending their comfort zones and being open in various thought-provoking ways. The best ones are inspiring, particularly for terrified people whose dream of transformative change remain firmly on the drawing board.

Here are some of my favorites in no particular order:

Marianne Power                    Help Me! and Love Me!

Bianca Bosker                       Cork Dork and Get the Picture

Noelle Hancock                    My Year with Eleanor

Shonda Rhimes                     My Year of Yes.

Gretchen Rubin                    The Happiness Project and the Five Senses.

Jessica Pan                            Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come.

Rachel Bertsche                    MWF Seeks BFF

Melody Warnick                   This is where you belong

Viv Groskop                         I laughed, I Cried: One Woman, One Hundred days, the Mother of All

 Challenges.