Nonficton - Biographies, Memoirs Thoughts

It was very interesting to see how many biographies are published in a year.
There's a real mix in quality or should I say style so as not to be judgmental- the award winners to sensationalism. So you may get a NF reader like a fiction reader -- does the biography reader like something well-written -- the writing is great or does the biog. reader want a quick, light read maybe even gossipy -- almost fast-paced you could say. Same could be true of memoirs. One big difference with biographies from fiction and memoirs/autobiographies: you may have multiple titles about the same figure with different slants or views of the person; there may be "revisionist" views of presidents and others. In addition as compared to fiction , the photographs --number of photos and what they are -- informal family shots, etc. may be a factor in the selection the reader chooses when there is more than one bio on a figure. Setting is important too - some people only like to read about Americans, for example. Another difference with bios and autobios as compared to fiction is that I suspect that many biographies/autobios are not read cover to cover as a novel is even if the reader likes the bio/autobio-- some books may be prohibitively long and for other readers they may only want to skim certain aspects of the figures life. It also helps with Books on CD if the person reads his/her biography. Our copy of Pres. Bill Clinton's book on CD in which he did the reading (abridged) was much more popular than the version read by person other than Clinton.


Memoirs are spread across Dewey in our library. So, the appeal factors --wanting a memoir by a firefighter will be in one area - and as said the web catalog helps with memoirs. Memoirs are "in" now - it will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
And look how long the Glass Castle has been on bestsellers lists and reserve lists at libraries.