This reviewer loved The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls--who is now a gossip columnist for MSNBC.  Who knows if it's all true but it's a great story about a very unconventional childhood.  Jeannette says her mom was more into painting than raising kids, and didn't seem to care about things like fixing dinner.  Her dad was paranoid and made them move a lot because he was afraid people were after him.  Some of her childhood memories include getting seriously burned after trying to cook her own hot dogs when she was 4, digging through the school garbage cans for something to eat, and lugging her favorite rock around from house to house throughout all their various moves.  As a reader I felt for her as a little girl and I wanted to keep reading to see if things ever got better for her and to see how she would survive.