I have several aviation type biographies and memoirs (we are very airplaney around here), but I'll spare you those until I get to the obscure miscellaneous nonfiction category! Here are some great bios and memoirs though that I think have been overlooked:

The Wilder Shores of Love by Lesley Blanch. It sounds like a bodice ripper but this impressive biography of four 19th century women is fantastic. It covers Isabel Arundell who married Richard Burton and went to Arabia, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, a cousin of Empress Josephine (as in Napoleon and Josephine) who was abducted by pirates and ended up as a gift to the ruler of the Ottoman Empire - and ruled a royal harem. Also, Jane Digby who traveled with Bedouins and loved a Syrian Sheik and Isabelle Eberhardt who traveled across the Sahara as a man. Each part is more riveting than the last and just great reading.

Among Stone Giants by Jo Anne Van Tilburg. The only thing I know about Easter Island is what National Geographic has seen fit to tell the world (which is really quite a lot). I had never heard of Katherine Routledge though and her 19th century voyage there with her husband, or the tragedy of mental illness that seems to have robbed her of receiving her scientific due. Save a woman explorer from obscurity and read this great bio!

A Joyful Noise by Janet Gillespie. This is one of the those cozy family histories about life on the New England Coast and the crazy hijinks that ensued every summer when the family got together at the summer place. It's just perfect really, for curing whatever ails you about the world today. This is one of my books for disappearing into, and it never fails to make me feel better.

The Big House by George Howe Colt. It took me a few chapters to realize that Colt is married to Anne Fadiman, one of my favorite essayists. I knew her husband was a writer but never realized what a gifted fellow he is. This book is a history of a family house, and all the good times that happened there and the sad realization that the family can no longer hold on to it (property taxes are killing us all). But - well, George is not ready to let the old house go and what he does to rally family support is really quite endearing. I loved this book, it has a fascinating amount of history within it about Cape Cod and it's also just a fun read.

Cottage for Sale by Kate Whouley. I really lucked into seeing this title in Booksense. It's about a woman in Cape Cod who sees a 1940s cottage for sale and decides to buy it - and all the chaos that ensues from getting it moved and fitted into her existing cottage and then getting it repaired and everything else. It's a lot like a house remodel type book, in that many things go wrong and many things are a surprise but Whouley is such a good writer that she keeps it from slipping into any sort of easily dismissive genre classification. It's funny and it's witty and Kate is pretty damn cool.

Also, for a movie tie-in, I have both Who Gets the Drumstick?, the book Yours, Mine and Ours was based on (I haven't seen the new version but love the Henry Fonday/Lucille Ball classic) and Cheaper by the Dozen which is about a turn of the century family and nothing in common with the Steve Martin movie of the same name except both have 12 kids. These books are both classics, both very funny and also pretty darn interesting to read. I'm still kicking myself for not picking up the hardcover edition of Belles on Their Toes (the sequel to Cheaper) when I saw it at Powells. You'd think I'd know better by now, but I keep letting good books pass me by!

Tomorrow we'll tackle literature/fiction - that ought to be huge!!!