Six Word Reviews
Posted by: Eva on: February 27, 2008
Inspired by Callista’s tag for the six word memoir meme and the pile of books I need to review, I decided to combine them. Without further ado, here are my six word reviews:
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott: Scottish dialect, heroine has real gumption!
The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin: Unusual style, Imperial Russian newbie sleuth.
A Room With a View by E.M. Forster: Brits meet in Florence. Love ensues.
The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt: Seventh grader discovers life through Shakespeare.
Khufu’s Wisdom by Naguib Mahfouz: Fable like tale of Ancient Egypt.
The Translator by Daoud Hari: Darfur genocide brought to tragic life.
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs: Fun chick lit until depressing ending.
So just in case I don’t end up getting fuller reviews, there are the snapshots. Perhaps I’ll start a new wave of book blogging over here! Forget the deep insights, interesting stylistic devices, memorable characters. Six words or less-the McBook Review. Oh-I was supposed to do something about my own life as well, right? Here goes: IR junkie hopes to become diplomat. That wasn’t too profound was it? I think I used up my miniscule cleverness reserve on the reviews. I’ll give this more thought and maybe have something better tomorrow!
22 Responses to "Six Word Reviews"
2 | trish
February 27, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I love it! Very clever. I think The Wednesday Wars sounds most interesting…
3 | T Y
February 27, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Oooh, that’s a good a idea.
It gets so daunting when you’re reading faster than you can review. Who needs to be wordy anyways.
4 | jocelyn
February 27, 2008 at 11:24 pm
What a clever idea! I hope you don’t mind if I steal it & write some six-word reviews of my own 
5 | verbivore
February 28, 2008 at 3:55 am
These were fun and such a great idea! We should all be forced to try economy once in a while on our book reviews!
6 | Debi
February 28, 2008 at 4:39 am
Oh Eva, those were absolutely brilliant! And despite their brevity, I still wrote down two new titles to check out. Fabulous job!
7 | Stefanie
February 28, 2008 at 6:45 am
That was fun. Though I suspect a six-word review is harder to write than a longer one. But finding the essence must be rather enjoyable
8 | Lezlie
February 28, 2008 at 7:18 am
Love the 6 word reviews! It forces a person to focus on what was enjoyable (or not) about the books. I might have to steal the idea also. . .
Lezlie
9 | CJHill
February 28, 2008 at 9:57 am
That’s a great idea and I think your six word biography fits you very well.
cjh
11 | Danielle
February 28, 2008 at 10:52 am
I sort of like those little mini reviews–how fun. Faced with a stack of books like that I think I’d opt for six word ones, too! Did you enjoy the Akunin? I’ve read the first and mean to read more.
14 | Nancy, aka Bookfool
February 28, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Oh, wow, maybe I should do that. I’m soooo far behind on reviews. Yours were great! The Wednesday Wars sounds particularly fun. And, thanks for the warning about The Friday Night Knitting Club’s depressing ending.
15 | Eva
February 28, 2008 at 4:15 pm
SuziQ, glad you liked it!
Trish, The Wednesday Wars was sooo good. I’m going to have to write a fuller review on it.
TY, yeah, but I had to leave out so much. Maybe six sentence reviews?
Jocelyn, I’ll look forward to reading them!
Verbivore, yeah-I usually go on waaay too long in my reviews.
Debi, thanks! You should do them too.
Stefanie, it was fun, but I came up with some better ones later. And that’s a bit annoying.
Lezlie, look forward to seeing yours!
CJ Hill, thanks. 
Tara, aww-thanks! I don’t really think about myself as creative, so I appreciate that.
Danielle, I did enjoy the Akunin! I have an ARC of the latest one to review for CurledUp, so I figured I should at least read the first one in the series.
JenClair, thanks!
Iliana, thanks!
Nancy, I’m glad you liked them. Yeah-I think the Knitting Club should come with a big warning stamp “Unnecessarily depressing ending.” It dropped it down sooo far in my mind.
16 | Stephanie
February 28, 2008 at 7:20 pm
WOW, I can’t believe you finished The Friday Night Knitting Club already! Sorry to hear that you didn’t like the ending. When we spoke to the author about the ending, she mentioned that a lot of people didn’t care for the ending and she gets e-mails about it all the time. She decided though that all of the characters in the book were starting to get their lives on track and they needed something to propel them forward and felt that the ending, albeit depressing, would be appropriate. When she said that to us I felt that I understood her reasoning better.
17 | Kim L
February 28, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I liked your reviews. Short. Opposite of the usual in-depth reviews one finds here, but that cool because variety is nice
Although I imagine it isn’t effortless to distill a book down to 6 words. It would probably take me just as long to come up with a clever 6 word summary as a lengthy one. Guess you’ve just got mad skills at the 6 word summary.
18 | Eva
February 28, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Stephanie, I loved it right until then; I suspected it was going to happen, but I still think it was gratuitous. So, in my head, I’ve just rewritten the ending, lol. Thanks so much for sending it to me!
Kim, it was kind of nice to do some short reviews. These may become a regular feature! lol @ the mad skills; I reworked the Khufu’s Wisdom, because I didn’t like it all that much.
21 | Emily Barton
March 1, 2008 at 7:06 am
Oh, what fun! I just loved this. I could never be so cleverly succinct when discussing books.
[...] by Eva’s post at A Striped Armchair, I’ve decided to post some six-word reviews of my own! As you may know, I am a contributor to [...]
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In Loving Memory
February 27, 2008 at 9:51 pm
What fun!!!