My Thoughts on Memoirs

Non-fiction is a genre I admittedly don't read very often. Non-fiction and memoirs don't move fast enough for me and I typically get bored with it. If I wanted to read a book about someone's life they had better have lived a very interesting life and have done things with it that I admire, find interesting, and/or want to know the psychology of. But I want all of a memoir to be true. Finding out that the Little House series wasn't entirely true absolutely crushed me as a small child. I can understand why you would embellish facts and stories because those embellished bits can be a large part of why a book sells, and I'll admit it has worked on me more than once. I feel lied to if it wasn't entirely true and honestly it puts me off the entire genre for months if not years. But non-fiction will always have elements of fiction and it's the picking out those elements and understanding that some things will seem greater than they were. I understand this and accept it because even looking at the way I tell stories I leave bits of information out or exaggerate things (ignoring the stories I flat out refuse to tell). So I suppose stories don't have to be perfect because the person isn't perfect. My memory is the opposite of perfect and having to memorize a piece for orchestra or a speech for APUSH is actually extremely hard to do, so if I can't do it and remember everything perfectly why do I expect authors to? My biggest problem is the changing of things and facts that the author knew were incorrect or altered, that's when you cross the line.