Blog Post #5

In order for a book to be considered I feel like it has to be completely true. I mean I think that at least the facts should be real, but if you mess up a word here and there on the quotes then I don’t think that would be too much of a problem. A non-fiction book I supposed to be a TRUE story, it has to have truth behind it and if someone wants to stretch their story then they can have their book be a realistic fiction rather than a non-fiction story. I just think that if an author is writing and decides they want to say they did all these things and make them look like a great person, or like a person who went through so many things to make people feel bad for them, and that’s not the true story, they aren’t being true to themselves. They are cheating their life story if they are saying all of these things that they didn’t do, writers so take pride in the things they have actually done rather than take pride in something that wasn’t them.

I do not think a “half-truth” story is ok, just for the main reason that, they are distributing false information. I think that if they want to do a half-truth story to just leave it at a realistic fiction place, and at the front write something like, “some parts of this story are based from real life experiences.” That would be, I think, a much better idea than writing something that isn’t all yours. Either write a half-truth or write a true story. I think Frey and Mortenson was a bit wrong in stretching the truth, I understand they want everyone to think they have gone through so much but isn’t their life story enough for them? If they would have been true to themselves in the story, they could have avoided so many problems for themselves.

I think that we should label things non-fiction just because if we don’t, no one will truly know the truth. Although right now, no one always knows the full truth but it is just better to read something that someone tried their best to write it truthfully, rather than purposely know it wasn’t true, and write it anyway.