This book is probably should be retitled. This very broad title doesn’t tell you that the goal of this book is for you to be able to tell a story in “The Moth”. The way the book is written is that someone says they want to try to tell a story at a “Moth” event, and the staff of the event says to go read this book first.
But in the book they explain the idea behind “The Moth” organization and it sounded like a more modern Toastmaster’s Club aimed at younger (more liberal?) people. The book describes it as open mic poetry without the poetry, which seems to be apt. Not really my scene culturally but it is good to read about new things.
Luckily there is a lot of good advice and information about how to make a good story that could be used generally, and I was satisfied to go in and pick out the useful morsels and leave the rest behind.
It was very entertaining to watch some of the storytellers on the Moth YouTube channel – kind of like a more user-friendly TED talk. I picked out a few stories and they were pretty good. One that I really enjoyed seemed to ignore some of the advice from the book, which made me wonder how much stock I should put into what was written elsewhere.
I got some great advice out of the book, and so I would call it an overall positive reading experience. I’m looking forward to watching some more performances online, and thinking a little more deeply about the stories I may have to tell in the future.
Next I am reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
