Truth in Memoir

To be considered a non-fiction book I think the book should be 98% true. I think there can a small stretch; for example in A Million Little Pieces he claims he was in jail for three months when in reality was only a few hours. But if you were telling your friends how you went to jail you wouldn’t day you were only in there of 2 hours, you would say for a day or maybe even two. Three months is taking it a little too far. Another example from that book is how he says Lilly committed suicide by hanging herself when she actually cut her wrists. That ‘altercation’ was one that should not be messed with. That is taking it too far for me. Important details like that should not be changed but it think minor details can be to make things more interesting. Half-truths are ok as far as a book goes to write. But they should not be non-fiction. If an author is writing a half-truth then they should label it as a fiction. There is no harm in putting based on a true story on the cover though. If I see that I will know that this author had experienced some of the things in the story plot but may have made up the other half, I would be ok with that. I think most people would be too. Everyone starts to point fingers when the book is not the full truth. That’s why people get mad when an author lies in a ‘non-fiction’ story. If the author but it in the fiction side of the book store and put based on a true story on the cover it would sell just as well and there would be no fingers pointed over it. The only reason books should be labeled as fiction or non-fiction is for readers to find what they like easer.     

Readicide

            I think that schools should stop teaching some of the traditional school books; for example Romeo and Juliet. True it is a classic, but what does that really have to do with the direction schools are heading. In my class we are currently reading it and instead of getting meaning out of it and understanding the significance we are struggling to even know the just of what they are saying. To read act 1 scene 1 took a whole week. In a week with a normal book, it could be finished and the class could have moved on to something else. Instead classes are wasting up to a month reading one play. Whatever the reason schools keep the play in the curriculum there is another book to take its place. If they want to get across forbidden or doomed love, teach The Hunger Games (which also poses as a great book for class discussion). If the schools want a love tragedy, teach The Vow. The poem is replicable and I think it’s time it is. I don’t think there should be more of one try of genre. I think at the beginning of each year the students should choose from a list of books what they what to read as a whole. One genre is not better then another for teaching. It depends on how the students want to learn a lesson from a book. I haven’t read Mice and Men or Macbeth and I’m perfectly fine with that. I do not feel as though I am missing out. I don’t think that if there was a specific genre taught that that would “shape” future generations. “classics” are taught now and there is still a very wide variation in students today. People are still going to have their own personality and changing the books read in a class room is not going to change who they will eventually turn out to be.  

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