You have just over a week of summer reading left before Labor Day. What to do? Here are three memoirs to dive into, just out in paperback:
“My Life on the Road” by Gloria Steinem (Random House, $18). In this vibrant narrative, Steinem tells the story of her worldwide wanderings — her far-flung assignments as a journalist, her years as a footloose political activist and her encounters with just plain folks. It’s also an affectionate remembrance of her father, a loving but restless dad who couldn’t stay put, any more than his famous daughter.
“M Train” by Patti Smith (Vintage, $16). Another memoir by a brilliant musician who has spent large chunks of her life traveling. “Though the book has been described as a travel memoir, that is a conceit, a frame on which to hang a multilayered meditation on loss, making art, mortality and the sacred, said the Seattle Times’ Paul de Barros.
“Heart Earth” by Ivan Doig (Scribner, $20) Just reissued by Scribner, this book is a companion volume to Seattle author Doig’s prizewinning memoir “This House of Sky.”
Doig, who died last year, was raised in Montana by his father and maternal grandmother (his mother died on his 6th birthday). But once he discovered a cache of letters from his mother to her brother during World War II, he was able to fill in a portrait of a vibrant, can-do woman who left a huge hole in the hearts of her family. Kirkus Reviews called “Heart Earth “a profoundly original and lustrous re-creation.”