When you’ve finished your morning paper, pick up one of these books to join in on New York City’s largest unofficial reading group: The Subway Book Club. Recently, a slew of new memoirs have come out or are slated to, so you can immerse yourself in someone else’s life while commuting when you’d so much rather be reading in the park. Actually, just call out sick and take the day to page through one of these new memoirs outside. You deserve it.
“One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter” by Scaachi Koul
This collection of personal essays on growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants in America looks at identity, sexism, loneliness and the idea of belonging, all through Koul’s exceedingly sharp humor and sarcastic retelling of formative parts of her first twenty-something years of life.
“Abandon Me: Memoirs” by Melissa Febos
The second memoir by this former dominatrix turned writer delves into Febos’ childhood and upbringing, starting with the abandonment by her own father and launching into a striking narrative exploring Febos’ adulthood, relationships and gripes with her identity.
“South and West: From a Notebook” by Joan Didion
Though her novels and nonfiction reporting secured Didion in the literary canon, her personal writing, as seen in 2007’s “The Year of Magical Thinking,” is truly extraordinary. This book lets readers into two previously unpublished personal accounts from Didion’s notebooks: memories from a Southern road trip with her husband, and notes and thoughts from the Patty Hearst trial of 1976 in California.
“Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)” by David Sedaris
Every title by the hilarious Sedaris is a serious gift from his inexplicably quirky mind, and what better way to indulge in Sedaris than with the pages of his personal journals, in the first of two volumes spanning four decades. (Out May 30)
“Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body” by Roxane Gay
The introspective and prolific author (“Bad Feminist” and, most recently, “Difficult Women”) returns with her second book of 2017: a memoir exploring her complicated relationship with food, her body and self-worth. (Out June 13)
