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My Insatiable Appetite For Reading Memoirs

Unpacking the addictive power of other people’s stories and what they give me

Jae L
7 min readJan 14, 2025
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

This time of year is the high-water mark of my reading activity. Since Christmas, I’ve been plowing through books at an average of two per week.

It seems that when given free rein, my reading tastes gravitate toward memoirs. I‘ve recently read books by Grace Tame, Katherine May, Gina Chick and Clare Bowditch and I’m currently reading Rewilding the Urban Soul by Claire Dunn.

You mightn’t have heard of some of these but they are all fascinating women who tell their stories with honesty and writing that soars. They are hugely varied in style, from the poetic to the conversational but equally significant in impact. I urge you to Google them.

I used to scoff at people who insisted on only reading stories that were “true”, as though they had a legitimate claim on their time and attention that fiction did not. Yet stocking fillers from sporting heroes and celebrities struck me as a waste of time when you could be reading proper books.

I‘ve always been a lover of fiction. Flicking through my Kindle history, I’m reminded of a time when I chewed through psychological thrillers. (For the record, I’m not planning an essay interrogating what that says…

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Jae L
Jae L

Written by Jae L

Queer, neurodivergent and in the business of asking questions and stirring things up. Conspire with me. diverge999@gmail.com; https://justinefield.substack.com

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