A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year: Hundreds of Stories on the Pandemic - Six-Word Memoirs

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AUTHOR: Six-Word Memoirs

GENRE: Non-Fiction.
RATING: 3.5 stars.

All of us have had a “terrible, horrible, no good” couple of years. In the emotional upheaval of these last two years (and running), the highest impact has no doubt been felt in the field of education. Everyone knows how the medical fraternity have been the heroes of the pandemic, but a very close second have been teachers. From personal connections to two-way communications to friendly interactions, everything was suddenly partitioned with a screen and educators had to figure out almost overnight how to teach through Zoom.

Six Word Memoirs are known on Twitter for their six word “American haiku”. In this collection, they bring together six word one-liners from various members connected to education – students, teachers, principals, special trainers, administrators, parents, and so on. In addition, there are also essays by professional educators on how they adapted their teaching sessions to the online mode. While I liked the one-liners, what won my heart was the essays. They truly reflected how much of unheralded efforts the teaching community has put in over the years of the pandemic.

Most people will of course opt for this book because of the six word memoirs. So here’s a little bit more about them. They comes from a variety of age groups, right from 3 years plus. They cover a variety of moods: joy, despondency, anxiety, hope… Some of them are outright funny while others will make you feel a strong empathy. The only issue is that you can’t read this in one go. This is a book to be savoured slowly else it gets repetitive too soon.

Some of the pages contain illustrated six word memoirs where talented artist students not just composed their six-word sentence but also sketched a matching image for it. These are brilliant.

In six words,
Read but not in one go.

My thanks to Six-Word Memoirs and NetGalley for the ARC of “A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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