Recently, the editors at Oprah’s O Magazine published a snappy summer reading guide called

“O’s Declaration of Reader Independence”—a freedom-ringing ten-point manifesto against

summer reading “group-think.”

The list includes such liberating notions as #2: the right “to see the movie first,”#7: the right to
“be miffed if your friend doesn’t like a book you recommend,” and #9: the right to “declare
yourself unmoved by the existential struggles of vampires.”

While much of O’s manifesto feels right, I’m a little skeptical of #8, the right to “ignore memoirs
by people who have barely cracked their 30s.” Certainly readers have that right, and certainly
anyone can understand why Oprah’s magazine might encourage its readers to avoid young
memoirists (particularly the recovering drug addict types), but the many babies thrown out with
that bathwater deserve a little more consideration than the article suggests.

So to Oprah’s readers and to anyone else who may be feeling a little wary of young memoirists, I
offer five books that challenge the notion that twenty- and thirtysomething writers have little to
offer the reading public:

1. Notes from No Man’s Land, by Eula Biss. Winner of the Graywolf Prize for
Nonfiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. David Shields called
Notes “An utterly beautiful and deeply serious performance.”

2. For You, For You, I am Trilling These Songs, by Kathleen Rooney. Katherine Boyle
wrote, “Echoing Joan Didion’s The White Album, Rooney’s personal essays turn into a
freeze-frame of life in the U.S.”

3. Opa Nobody, by Sonya Huber. Shortlisted for the Saroyan prize. Lee Martin said,
“Opa Nobody is a brave book of politics, history, and love—a book filled with an
irrepressible embrace of humanity."

4. Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, by Ander Monson. Another Graywolf Prize
winner. Steven Poole of the Guardian wrote that Monson “has a miniaturist, free-
associative humour, which is what you want in an essayist.”

5. What Becomes You, by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz. According to Floyd Skloot,
"What Becomes You is a radically strange, deeply moving, unique book, a mother and
child story like none you've ever read.”

And, of course, there are many, many more.

Do you know one that should be on this list? Let us know.

Happy summer reading.

-Joey Franklin