Not sure what I can say that hasn't been said already about Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids . Not only has it been widely praised, but was also a nominee for book of the year in the National Book Circle Critic Award in the autobiography category. Smith, I didn't know, grew up in the South Jersey area. I also had no idea that she lived at the Chelsea Hotel , that she never thought she'd be a singer, that she went to New York to be an artist in drawing and poetry. I had no idea that she was such an amazing writer, either. It's not really a rock and roll memoir. Instead, it's a coming of age story about a confused young woman who moves to New York at 20 years old after giving up a baby for adoption. She lives on the streets for a while until she meets the artist Robert Mapplethorpe . Together, they struggle with their work, themselves, and if not each other, then their relationship with each other, particularly Mapplethorpe, who was exploring his homosexuality