How can one write entertaining memoirs about such an occupation?

I could write entertaining memoirs about things I did when not writing.

Praising this "effortlessly entertaining" memoir here last year, Paul Levy said "Reichl is . . . witty, fair-minded, brave and a wonderful writer."

Birkenhead's next book was a most entertaining and vivid memoir (1953) of his highly eccentric novel-writing, gypsy-loving (she believed quite wrongly that the family had gypsy descent) elder sister, Eleanor.

He has written a book entitled "The Third Best Hull" (ECW Press) which contains entertaining and often hilarious memoirs of his hockey career.

But despite the title, Horovitz gives us an entertaining (if occasionally exasperating and disorganized) memoir of his life as an English immigrant in Israel.

And that is the fun and the tender heart of an entertaining and not at all ill-advised memoir.

Johnson and his house also figure prominently in another new book, "No Place Like Utopia," Peter Blake's hugely entertaining memoir of architects and architecture in the postwar decades.

Invert this phrase pope of imperfection and you have an alternative title for this entertaining if ultimately unsatisfying memoir.

This reverses the formula of "Renovations," the entertaining memoir by Mr. Marchese (parts of which appeared in slightly different form in this newspaper).