Why Reading memoirs Beats Reading Literature

Get to learn about real people and real events, not mere contrivances to propel a plot forward.

Can learn wisdom through others' mistakes and avoid repeating them.

Get to learn the inside scoops of private lives without the guilt, slant, or slander of gossip.

The things that happen in real life are far more absurd, ridiculous, impossible, fantastical, and compelling than fiction—no one could think up such stuff.

Memoirs get the best of both fact and fiction worlds. Their fluid combination of memory and subjective impression and factual events and real people create powerful impressions that need not get watered down with “this is all made up...” thoughts.

As the saying goes, “Everyone has a great story to tell: his own.”

The most important thing that people have to say—life lessons, recommendations, regrets, etc.—are often told free of charge (if you borrow the book, say) in memoirs.

Gives great insights into how people in different cultures and places far removed from personal experience live, what motivates them, their perceptions, etc. e.g. A child in Moldavia, a prostitute victim of human trafficking in the Middle East, an office worker in Japan, a quadriplegic mountain climber who summits Everest.

It's a socially acceptable form of voyeurism. Indeed, many authors provide very graphic depictions of their sex (and non-sex) lives. Amazingly, some can be downright humorous and/or moving.

Can feel thankful that you never had to live through or experience that—especially when the person is admirable or enviable in many ways.

Can be a fine source of motivation to act because nearly all great, notable, worthy people started out as normal people who did tiny imitable steps along the way to get to where they got. If they could do it, why not you?

Doesn't feel like such an unproductive waste of time due to the potential self-improvement aspects.

Usually they're far easier reads, written in more common down-to-earth language unlike literature with its obsessive use of metaphors, literary references (Greek, Middle East, Shakespearean, slang, etc.), obscure historical events, incomprehensible foreign words and phrases, complicated show-offy sentences, fuzzy ideas and logic, difficult-to-follow reasoning, etc.

Seldom have to re-read a sentence multiple times to “get it” or use a dictionary multiple times in a single paragraph and still not “get it.” Some of the world's so-called best literature are just too dang obscure. Why can't literature use simple declarative sentences to say what a thing is rather than use long, convoluted sentences to say what the thing is supposedly like (but really isn't)? Since when does fancy and flouncy and impractical language equal literary? I don't get it.

Memoir plots tend to be a lot more straight forward, easy to follow, less depressing, and true to life. Literary plots all too often seem to insist on a neat (often depressing) ending that ties all loose ends together like a present neatly wrapped with a ribbon and bow on top. Why? Since when is life like that? Also, characters who act entirely out-of-character just to keep the plot moving forward or who have non-credible things happen to them strain literature's credibility. What's the point? Sheer entertainment, I guess.

In short, memoirs are more informative because they're real.

It's been said that literary writers are a bunch of liars. I can see why.