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 enlarge | Author: Abigail Thomas
Publisher: Sterling
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.64
You Save: $6.31 (42%)
New (26) Used (8) from $8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 48257
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 1402752350
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.06692
EAN: 9781402752353
ASIN: 1402752350
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-9 of 9 | | « PREV | | |
Captivating and Inspiring June 9, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
A completely charming book about memoirs encouraging you to write your life stories. Captivating stories, fascinating vignettes, and superb writing combine to make this an inspiring book. Her writing exercise suggestions are interesting enough to tempt even non-writers and provide more experienced writers a great chance to warm up.
"Writing memoirs is a way to figure out who you used to be and how you got to be who you are." Based on this book, I am looking forward to other titles in this AARP "Arts of Living" series. I only wish that this quite small book was twice as long!
Excellent suggestions for memoir writing May 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"What is memoir? How do you write one? What if you can't remember anything, or worse, what if you remember it all?"
"AARP The Magazine" has started publishing an "Art of Living" series of books, and this passage begins Abigail Thomas's excellent contribution. She shares lessons about how to get started and stay motivated while writing your own personal history.
Thomas helps wannabe writers find a "side door" with writing exercises. It's great fun to watch her apply her hints in practice: "Trust the work to find its own way," Example: "take any 10 years of your life and reduce them to two pages. Every sentence has to be three words long--not two, not four, but three words long. You discover there's nowhere to hide in three-word sentences."
Other useful hints:
Cut ruthlessly.
Write every day.
"Make a start".
I really enjoyed this book, but also consult Writing Life Stories: How To Make Memories Into Memoirs, Ideas Into Essays And Life Into Literature by Bill Roorbach. One of his first writing exercises was to make a map of the earliest neighborhood I could remember. It was fascinating to compare the map I came up with against an aerial map published by the government.
These two fine books use a similar approach, but each writer has their own distinctive "voice", just as you will if you take their advice and just "make a start".
Robert C. Ross 2008
 I will take some of the authors.. May 19, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I will take some of the ideas the author has typed in bold as a stepping stone in writing my memories. I have read the two other books (the memoirs) that Abigail has written and I got a lot out of them. This one is not as good. :( She writes in a very dry style for this book. I agree with one of the other reviewers, 'I was expecting more' and what I got out of it was a lot less.
 For Memoirs, Dig Deep March 28, 2008
38 out of 38 found this review helpful
"Be honest, dig deep or don't bother," says Abigail Thomas in her charming new book, Thinking About Memoir. Like a rambling conversation with a close friend, this 128-page guide is short on techniques and long on advice and personal stories from the author's own life as a writer. It teaches by showing, rather than telling.
Thomas' gentle humor is evident throughout, as when she describes childhood memories of tearing dolls apart with her sister and throwing the body parts out the window of their moving car, or pounding on the lovebirds' cage to stop their singing.
More than once as I was reading along, engrossed in scenes from her trip to Belize or a cell phone conversation overheard on the train, I was surprised by a lovely sentence like this one: "Memory seems to be an independent creature inspired by an event, not faithful to it." Or this: "I'm old enough now to know that the past is every bit as unpredictable as the future." To a sixty-something memoir writer like me, these words offered reassurance and encouragement. Even if my memory of an event is vague, I can still write about it!
Thomas advises us to stick to the details and let the larger story tell itself, without trying to control or direct it. She advises "losing" abstract nouns and including as many specific details as possible in any story. And far from being discouraged when she found herself passionately writing bits and pieces with no narrative flow, she kept at it. "I never cross-examine the muse," she says.
As if to illustrate her point, most chapters contain scenes from her daily life--bidding on eBay, eating ice cream, taking her dog to the vet--followed by (loosely) related writing prompts. The exercises apply not just to memoirs; they could be used for personal essays as well.
In her own writing practice, Thomas prefers the term "diary" to "journal" which she believes implies always writing for publication, whereas a diary can mean any notes at all, including recipes. She has kept diaries all her life, preferring moleskin-covered notebooks to any other kind.
In Thinking About Memoir, we learn almost as much about the book's writer as we do about writing. She is a sister, mother and grandmother, daughter of a famous scientist, and a recent widow who was married three times. A real woman you might like to know, Thomas is an avid observer of the ordinary moments of life: having coffee with a friend; reading the newspaper; trying to learn pilates; rescuing a dog from a fence. These are the moments that shed light on who we are. They are the ones we must write about.
Thinking About Memoir is the first volume in the "Arts of Living" series from the AARP.
by Linda Wisniewski
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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