Biography & Memoir

We recommend starting with Born a Crime by Trevor Noah — it is funny, moving, and written in vivid, accessible prose that makes it easy to read at pace. If you want something more literary and introspective, Educated by Tara Westover is a remarkable memoir that combines personal narrative with broader reflections on knowledge, identity, and family. Both are outstanding entry points into the genre.

Biography and memoir develop three skills that exams test directly: author’s perspective and tone — since memoirs are written from a specific, subjective point of view, reading them trains you to identify and evaluate how a narrator’s position shapes their account; narrative comprehension — following a life across time builds the ability to track complex, non-linear arguments; and vocabulary in context — the best biographers write with precision and range, naturally building your reading vocabulary.

Elementary: Accessible memoirs with direct, conversational prose and immediate emotional engagement — ideal for building reading confidence. Intermediate: Richer narrative craft, broader historical context, and more layered character portraits. Advanced: Dense, literary biographies requiring sustained attention and strong background knowledge. Master: Major biographical works like Robert Caro’s multi-volume studies — demanding, exhaustively researched, and written at the highest level of the form.

Read the full book whenever possible. In biography and memoir, the emotional and intellectual impact accumulates gradually — the significance of events, the development of character, and the emergence of themes only become clear through sustained reading. A review gives you facts; the book gives you understanding. Our reviews help you approach each title with the right framework; the mastery quiz then tests whether you have engaged with the narrative at exam depth.

Biographies and memoirs range enormously in length — from compact personal narratives (1–2 weeks at 1 hour per day) to major multi-hundred-page biographies (3–5 weeks). The good news is that narrative non-fiction tends to be the most readable of all non-fiction genres, so you will often find yourself reading faster than expected. We recommend letting yourself get absorbed in the story — the deep engagement that biography naturally generates is itself excellent comprehension training.

Yes. Our quizzes are modelled on CAT, GRE, and GMAT question patterns — testing inference, author’s tone, main idea, vocabulary in context, and logical structure. For biography and memoir titles, we place particular emphasis on identifying the narrator’s perspective and bias, understanding how personal experience shapes an author’s claims, and distinguishing between fact and interpretation — subtle but critical skills that the most demanding RC questions consistently test.