Lately, it seems as if bestseller book lists are filled with the titles of memoirs: sad, happy, violent and also adventurous ones. Professional writers, as well as newbies, want to tell their stories.

Bookstores and libraries devote sections to memoir books. I am a fan! I enjoy reading about the trials and challenges of others as well as their accomplishments and ability to overcome adversity and then share it. I am drawn to the lives of ordinary people and celebrities.

My interest in people’s lives has a lot to do with my former career: social work. I also facilitated memoir writing groups for senior citizens and have written numerous stories about my own life. It’s therapeutic, and I hope that one day, my family will be interested in reading my memories.

I believe Mark Twain’s philosophy that “no one has an uninteresting life and that every life is unique and special.” My father was a storyteller and I loved listening to tales of his experiences growing up on the lower east side of New York. After his death, I wrote those stories for my family to read. They loved them!

In my memoir groups, I often give a prompt to the writers: “This is the house in which I grew up.” Or, “Here is where I lived.” The stories that emerge are all different and there is no way of knowing whether or not the memories are accurate. They are simply the way the writer remembers.

In his last book, Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You can never go home again.” It was published in 1940, two…