During one of our top secret super editor meetings (okay, it’s not as cool as it sounds, but we do talk about cats a lot), April, Alex, and I were trying to come up with an idea to spark some life back into the Fiction Fix blog. Truthfully speaking, each of us became a little too busy to pay attention to our whimpering step-child “the blog,” but it was constantly on our minds. What could we do to liven things up and maybe get our staff members involved in the process?
The same boring topic was brought to the table as always when discussing what we could write about: book reviews. Being a literary magazine and appealing to an audience that reads, we figured… well, everyone likes reading books. But not everyone wants to read book reviews. Plus, our staff are so insanely busy with work, school, and life that most don’t have time to dedicate to writing thoughtful reviews. We can’t blame them; we’re riding the same crazy boat.
I found myself chuckling and saying, “Well, I would read or write them if they were a sentence long. Maybe something like, ‘This book was good.’”
I was met with silence.
And then… brilliance ensued!
Alex totally dug the idea, saying that it reminded him of a short story attributed to Ernest Hemingway that went, “For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” April thought that we could extend the idea even further and allow readers to write book reviews as haikus. What better way to talk about your favorite book, pique our audience’s interests in said book, utilize writing creativity, and not have to sift through loads of prose to get to the good details. And thus, the six word and haiku book reviews were born.
What you will see in the following weeks are all reviews written by our very own staff members. I took on the project in one of my design courses for graduate school and have to admit I’ve become a bit attached. But now, I am ready to release them to you and the world. So please, sit back, enjoy, and share with your friends our first installment of the haiku book reviews.
–Blair Romain