Sunday, December 6, 2009

Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak by Writers Famous & Obscure

Can you sum up your view of love in six words?

In the collection, Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak by Writers Famous & Obscure, edited by Smith Magazine, hundreds of people submitted six word memoirs of the ups and downs of romance. Who knew that in only six words you can say so much? An example would be Zak Nelson’s submission of, “I still make coffee for two”. Every page throughout the book is different. When one page can be filled with up to five memoirs, another can be a sketch (submitted by the author) along with the memoir typed on the bottom of the page. These memoirs were submitted by a variety of people through; snail mail, e-mail, or even social networking sites like Twitter. Submissions were gathered and published into one amazingly diverse book.

I believe that this is a great book for reluctant readers. The book is obviously a quick read of 237 pages of six-word memoirs. This book can be seen as seemingly simple but also critically deep at the same time. This would be very influential for teachers, and has already been implemented in the classroom. I think this would be a great tool in order to practice on analyzing quotes. It would be fun to give each student a memoir, and ask them to predict and write the author’s unique story.

I believe that this book is suitable for both teens and teachers. Each memoir is different and would be easily relatable to any aged person. I believe that a major theme in YAL is love. This book ties up hundreds of ideologies of love and love stories.

4 comments:

Clarissa H. said...

Hi Stephanie,

This sounds like a cool book! I liked how you included how it could be used to the classroom. Your review and this book reminded me of Hemingway's six-word stories. I think that a book like this especially combined with some of Hemingway's work could have endless possibilities for teaching succinct writing in the classroom. Thanks for sharing!

Caitlin Strandquist said...

This book sounds awesome! I've heard of people doing this with their lives, writing six word memoirs of their entire lives or something.

I think Ernest Hemingway's "life story" that he wrote started it: he wrote something like "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn."

Anne said...

I love quotes! I'm so getting this book. Kind of nice to see a book which doesn't involve some major catastrophe and seems to be upbeat and possibly full of humor. Great review.

Mallory Umar said...

Short statements or small quotes can say so much in so little writing. Writing a memoir after reading this text seems like a great activity for students!