Customer Reviews

3 Minutes or Less: Life Lessons from America's Greatest Writers

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If you are lucky enough to stumble upon this Amazon.com page, you should buy this book immediately. Why on earth would anyone actively seek such a book? Why does the world need another anthology and by the already famous? I found this at a discount chain store, and my one regret was not buying 10 copies when I had the chance. These short forms are little gems on universal themes (growing up, first love, etc). Susan Sontag has a great piece about writing; she observed, as time goes by, writing doesn't become easier; it becomes harder; wow! I've read about 3/4 of these shorts, and each one gives a different pleasure; try to write a complete story in less than 3 minutes. It ain't easy. The pieces remind me of Dinty Moore's creative nonfiction as well as the pieces you'd find in Brevity literary magazine.

I've been recommending this book to teachers for teaching classes. These pieces are short enough that it will keep the interest of students in this instant gratification world.

The editorial review for this book mentions that all of the stories are "entertaining." That's not quite true, some of the three minute stories are great, and some of them are downright annoying--but then again, perhaps that's the point. You don't buy a book by hundreds of writers so you can enjoy every letter of it. You buy it to embrace even the minutia of authors you already enjoy, and to sample, even if only briefly, the writings of others without having to invest the time and money required of a hundred different books. Towards that end, this book is simply fantastic. Some of the individual stories are, alone, worth the price of the entire text. Taken as a whole, this novel could only be a disappointment to the illiterate, or to the overly verbose.

Writers like to write, some profusely, others pithily. But when constrained to three minutes, sans editors or their own self-editing,

their mini-speeches show a whole new side to well-known writers. This book is all ups ands and down. Some clever, some confused

and wandering. Best you use Amazon's Look Inside Feature to sample these ninety-second wonders or wanderers.

Nice spread of top talents though; you might like to read the candid thoughts of writing celebs, focussed or consciously rapids-

streamed. For my taste (and these are real subjective nuggets) there are more ups and downs. This I'd call one-time-through

reading. (And yes, no power on earth could stop some writers from running over their three minutes. Now, this isn't chauvinistic,

but this seemingly holds truest for women writers.)