Summing It Up (in Six Words)

Summing It Up (in Six Words) – City Room – Metro – New York Times Blog

This looks like a fun book.

The New York-based, online Smith magazine is releasing a collection of six-word memoirs called “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure” (Harper Collins, 2008). The project was inspired, in part, by the legend of Ernest Hemingway responding to a challenge of a six-word story with “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Some of the highlights:

• Canada freezing. Gotham beckons. Hello, Si! — Graydon Carter
• Secret to life: marry an Italian. — Nora Ephron
• Brought it to a boil, often. — Mario Batali
• Nobody cared, then they did. Why? — Chuck Klosterman
• Eight thousand orgasms. Only one baby. — Neal Pollack
• I asked. They answered. I wrote. — Sebastian Junger
• Dad died, mom crazy, me, too. — Moby
• Fifteen years since last professional haircut. — Dave Eggers
• Born bald. Grew hair. Bald again. — A. J. Jacobs
• Well, I thought it was funny. — Stephen Colbert
• Relatively famous parents, very low self-esteem. — Molly Jong-Fast
• Fearlessness is the mother of reinvention. — Arianna Huffington
• Eat drink man man man man. — Michael Musto
• Gave commencement address, became sex columnist. — Amy Sohn
• I write because I can’t sleep. — Ben Mezrich
• Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished. — George Saunders
• Liars, hysterectomy didn’t improve sex life! — Joan Rivers

Lots of folk are adding their personal six word summaries to the NYTimes site.

So I did as well – comment #353: “I am my own hero, finally.”

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Tags: biography, brievity, book, six-word story, memoire

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Got my copy of Harry Potter #7!

Arts & Living: Hogwarts Hub – The source for all things ‘Harry Potter.’ (washingtonpost.com)

Yes, I’m one of those people. What can I say, it’s a good yarn and I want to know the end. I reserved a copy at Borders but while I was at Target this morning, there it was for $17.88 and no lines, either.

I’m already a third of the way through (it’s a quick read) and I think I will probably finish it this weekend. Don’t tell me the ending!

I am amazed that this was the front story of the Washington Post this morning.

technorati tags:Harry-Potter, books, storytelling, pop-culture, Washington-Post, wizard, Target, fiction

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My brief review of “Petal Pusher”

I finished reading the book on Friday. I tried to read it slowly to really savor it but once I hit Part 2 (about 1/3 of the way into the book) I couldn’t put it down and finished it that day. I highly recommend the book to anyone but I think that women who grew up about the same time (born 1959-1966) will truly appreciate it. Lindeen deals with so many issues (personal confusion, parental divorce, chronic illness, love and music) in a wonderfully truthful and humorous manner. She alternates between self-deprecation and self-appreciation very well and seems like a person who would be great to know over the years. The book is very personal (sometimes in a truly graphic manner) but there is a sense of privacy – you know that a line has been drawn and she’s only going to tell so much. I like that. She completely de-glamorizes the music industry (writing, practicing, touring and publishing) and yet still loves music.

I hope she has another book inside her. I suspect that since she’s so great with her memoir, she would be great at fiction. I can just imagine the stories she could tell.

technorati tags:books, Lindeen, Westerberg, Replacements, Zuzu’s, Petals