In May, she came out with "Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace," a new bestselling book from Doubleday that extolls the virtues — with all its conflicts — of modern motherhood as an exercise in laxity….She isn't alone. Waldman's book is one of a new batch of "momoirs" hitting the shelves, written by Jewish women who cop to being a certain kind of "bad mother."

His life is tied so tightly to his work that it's impossible to consider one without the other. His eight books include award-winning memoirs of his mother ("Looking After") and his father ("Rogue River Journal"), which he calls his "momoir" and "popoir."

We, on the other hand, are more interested in reading about the experience of parenthood. As a result, a whole new genre of nonfiction parenting literature — sometimes called "momoirs" — has erupted in the past seven or eight years, led by the confessional essays of Gen X writers like Spike Gillespie…and Ariel Gore….(Full disclosure: My agent is currently shopping my own momoir around to publishers. But mine is different from all the others, really.)