My View: This Week’s Best Memoir News 8/22/16

THERE IS LOTS OF MEMOIR NEWS this week and, at least according to me, all of it is good. The New York Times has announced a new weekly column in the form of an essay on a topic that is long overdue for examination. There are new books coming out in the fall, including one by pretty much everyone’s favorite American rock and roller; there is one celebrity memoir in the pipeline that I think we can all agree will be big; and earth itself is getting a good, hard, book-length look. And more. So read on.

The New York Times has begun a weekly series of essays by and about people living with disabilities. They debuted it with a breathtaking piece by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, who makes a brilliant point about why pride movements for people with disabilities have not made the same traction as other better known pride movements.

In Alexandra Risen’s lovely, “Unearthed: Love Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden,” she calls soil the new Prozac. Oh yeah.

Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming memoir is due out at the end of September, but you can preorder it here.

Here is a fine reminder of some marvelous earlier work from Ta-Nehisi Coates in a recent review.

It’s almost impossible to imagine that one woman could have slept with both Elvis Presley and Bruce Jenner in this lifetime unless that woman was a Playboy Bunny at which point, I guess, all bets are off except the one that gives good odds that this memoir by Linda Thompson will be big.

Natalie Portman makes Amos Oz’s memoir, “A Tale of love and Darkness,” into a film.

So what’s on your nightstand?