_{http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir}

One way to determine if a memoir is ready for publication is to compare it to others that have already been proven successful. Continuing to aim very high, the second author and book selected for analysis is the 2006 book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Here are a few quick observations:

• this New York Times Bestseller is a “mix of exquisite detail and inspired exaggeration (which) all add up to the Truth with a capital T that rhymes with G that stands for out-loud guffaws” as reported by Scott Simon for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday,
• it has approximately 81k words spread over 15 chapters, and
• “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is steeped in … the sweet, simple pleasures of an all-American boyhood. Even the world-weariest of souls will be charmed.” Parade

While Bryson and Sedaris may be contemporaries in time and country, their memoirs are worlds apart and inspired by worlds that no longer exist.

Six more successful memoirs will be reviewed in the weeks to come. Please let me know what your thoughts are on memoirs in general and what makes them worth reading for you.

Slow but sure, Patrick Cole