Books like Spare

01

Becoming

Michelle Obama · Memoir

Becoming is Michelle Obama's account of how a girl from a modest house on Chicago's South Side became one of the most recognized people in the world — and what that journey cost and revealed.

Both dig into identity.

02

A Promised Land

Barack Obama · Memoir

A Promised Land is the first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his 2008 campaign through the first two and a half years of his presidency, ending with the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · Memoir

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up mixed-race in South Africa during the final years of apartheid and its chaotic aftermath.

A kindred memoir read.

04

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

Both dig into identity.

05

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

Shares grief and identity with Spare.

06

Boy Erased: A Memoir

Garrard Conley · Memoir

Boy Erased is Garrard Conley's memoir of attending Love in Action, a conversion therapy program in Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 2000s.

Shares family and identity with Spare.

07

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner · Memoir

Crying in H Mart is Michelle Zauner's memoir of her mother's death from cancer and the loss it made her confront: not just of a parent but of the Korean half of her identity.

Shares grief and identity with Spare.

08

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama · Memoir

Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father in 1995, before entering politics, after being elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Shares family and identity with Spare.

09

Lucky Man: A Memoir

Michael J. Fox · Memoir

Michael J.

Shares family and identity with Spare.

10

Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire

Andrew Wilkinson · Memoir

Never Enough is Andrew Wilkinson's memoir about building a small empire of internet companies — Tiny, the holding company he co-founded, has acquired dozens of businesses — and discovering that accumulating wealth at a level he'd once have considered unimaginable didn't resolve the anxiety that had driven him to pursue it.

Shares identity and mental health with Spare.

11

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

James McBride · Memoir

James McBride grew up in Brooklyn and Queens as one of twelve children raised by a white Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity and married a Black minister.

Shares family and identity with Spare.

12

The Sixth Man

Andre Iguodala · Memoir

Andre Iguodala won four NBA championships and a Finals MVP award, but The Sixth Man is less interested in the games than in the social and psychological landscape those games happened inside.

Shares identity and mental health with Spare.