Mary Karr's Books

The Art of Memoir

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

256

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0062223089

ISBN 13

9780062223081

The Liars' Club

A Memoir

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Liars' Club

A Memoir

By: Mary Karr

The author, a poet, recounts her difficult childhood growing up in a Texas oil town.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

340

Publisher

Penguin Group

Published Date

ISBN 10

0140179836

ISBN 13

9780140179835

Lit

A Memoir

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Lit

A Memoir

By: Mary Karr

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR New York Times Book Review • The New Yorker • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Christian Science Monitor • Slate • St. Louise Post-Dispatch • Cleveland Plain Dealer • Seattle Times • NBCC Award Finalist Mary Karr’s unforgettable sequel to her beloved and bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club and Cherry “lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it. The Boston Globe calls Lit a book that “reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art." The New York Times Book Review calls it “a master class on the art of the memoir” and Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is “the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

464

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0061959685

ISBN 13

9780061959684

Cherry

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Cherry

By: Mary Karr

From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuses. Parts of Cherry will leave you gasping with laughter. Karr assembles a self from the smokiest beginnings, delivering a long-awaited sequel that is both "bawdy and wise" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

290

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101650745

ISBN 13

9781101650745

The Devil's Tour

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Devil's Tour

By: Mary Karr

In her celebrated essay "Against Decoration," published in Parnassus, Mary Karr took aim against the verbal ornaments that too often pass for poetry these days and their attendant justifications: deconstruction and a "new formalism" that elevates form as an end in itself. Her own poems, she says, are "humanist poems," written for everyday readers rather than an exclusive audience--poems that do not require an academic explication in order to be understood. Of The Devil's Tour, her newest collection, she writes: "This is a book of poems about standing in the dark, about trying to memorize the bad news. The tour is a tour of the skull. l am thinking of Satan in Paradise Lost: 'The mind is its own place and it can make a hell of heav'n or a heav'n of hell ... I myself am hell.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811212319

ISBN 13

9780811212311

Now Go Out There

(and Get Curious)

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Now Go Out There

(and Get Curious)

By: Mary Karr

A celebration of curiosity, compassion, and the surprising power of fear, based on the New York Times bestselling author and renowned professor’s 2015 commencement address at Syracuse University. “Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious & compassionate will save your ass.” Every year there are one or two commencement speeches that strike a chord with audiences far greater than the student bodies for which they are intended. In 2015 Mary Karr’s speech to the graduating class of Syracuse University caught fire, hailed across the Internet as one of the most memorable in recent years, and lighting up the Twittersphere. In Now Go Out There, Karr explains why having your heart broken is just as—if not more—important than falling in love; why getting what you want often scares you more than not getting it; how those experiences that appear to be the worst cannot be so easily categorized; and how to cope with the setbacks that inevitably befall all of us. “Don’t make the mistake of comparing your twisted up insides to other people’s blow-dried outsides,” she cautions. “Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.” An ideal—and beautifully designed—gift for a graduate or for anyone looking for some down-to-earth life advice, Now Go Out There is destined to become a classic.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

111

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0062442104

ISBN 13

9780062442109

Viper Rum

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Viper Rum

By: Mary Karr

In her third collection of poetry, Viper Rum, Mary Karr delves into autobiographical subject matter; various beloveds are birthed and buried in these touching lyrics, some of which, as the title suggests, deal with drink: I cast back to those last years I drank, alone nights at the kitchen sink, bathrobed, my head hatching snakes, while my baby slept in his upstairs cage and my marriage choked to death Precise and surprising, Karr's poems "take on the bedevilments of fate and grief with a diabolical edge of their own" (Poetry). Also included is Karr's controversial and prize-winning essay "Against Decoration," in which she took aim against the verbal ornaments that too often pass for poetry these days-the "new formalism" that elevates form to an end itself.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0142000183

ISBN 13

9780142000182

Lit CD

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Lit CD

By: Mary Karr

Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness—and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. It is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

386

Publisher

HarperAudio

Published Date

ISBN 10

0061939005

ISBN 13

9780061939006

Sinners Welcome

Poems

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Sinners Welcome

Poems

By: Mary Karr

A fourth compilation of poetry by the author of The Liars' Club and Cherry describes her evolution into an irreverent Catholic, detailing the various steps in her conversion and reflecting on the themes of loss, her tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and the influence of poetry as a pathway out of suffering. 25,000 first printing.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

Harper

Published Date

ISBN 10

0060776544

ISBN 13

9780060776541

Tropic of Squalor

Poems

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Tropic of Squalor

Poems

By: Mary Karr

A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar’s Club and Lit. Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous—that mystery some of us hope towards in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power—illness, death, love’s agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you’re an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0062699849

ISBN 13

9780062699848

Gary Karr: Life on the G String

By: Mary Rannie

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Gary Karr: Life on the G String

By: Mary Rannie

Gary Karr: Life on the G String chronicles the extraordinary international career of a double-bass soloist. Launched in 1962 by Leonard Bernstein, in a Young People's Concert at Carnegie Hall viewed on television by seven million people, Karr quickly gained legendary status for his virtuosity and inimitable lyricism, his infectious sense of humour, and the pioneering spirit that led him to found, in 1967, the International Society of Bassists, and he continues to perform and record at age seventy-five. In this account of Karr's professional and personal development, his own words punctuate the narrative and engage the reader in a lively, revealing conversation. Emotional, surprising, and entertaining, his story will appeal not only to his many fans and fellow-bassists, but to all musicians, music-lovers, and biography enthusiasts.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

289

Publisher

FriesenPress

Published Date

ISBN 10

1525501666

ISBN 13

9781525501661

The Liars' Club

A Memoir (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

By: Mary Karr

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Liars' Club

A Memoir (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

By: Mary Karr

It was first published twenty years ago. Karr's comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger's--a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. Now with a new foreword by Lena Dunham this unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as "funny, lively, and un-put-downable" (USA Today) today as it ever was. . ."--

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

354

Publisher

Penguin Classics

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143107798

ISBN 13

9780143107798

Book's by Mary Karr

The Art of Memoir

The Art of Memoir

The Liars' Club

The Liars' Club

Lit

Lit

Cherry

Cherry

The Devil's Tour

The Devil's Tour

Now Go Out There

Now Go Out There

Viper Rum

Viper Rum

Lit CD

Lit CD

Sinners Welcome

Sinners Welcome

Tropic of Squalor

Tropic of Squalor

Gary Karr: Life on the G String

Gary Karr: Life on the G String

The Liars' Club

The Liars' Club

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email