一. 感想
关于如何写家谱和回忆录，Zinsser讲到了一些该题材的独特性。例如，写作涉及到家庭成员的隐私时应该如何处理？回忆过去的心态应该如何为宜？以及回忆录的写作过程有疗伤的作用。
然而，无论任何题材的作品，其写作都有很多共性的特征。他一再强调：
Be YOURSELF and your readers will follow YOU anywhere.
Your product is YOU.
Don't be impatient to start writing your "memoir"—the one you had in mind before you began.
写作时摆正自己的位置，写出自己的风格，而并非取悦读者。动笔之前，务必先想清楚，这样才能写得顺畅，并且条理清晰。
在本书的最后一章，Zinsser再次提到：
The purposes that writers serve must be their own. What you write is yours and nobody else's. Take your talent as far as you can and guard it with your life.
Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel.
You will write only as well as you make yourself write.
如果用一句话总结，便是“尽力而为，自信地坚持做自己！”写作的过程本是享受，作为作者我们已然收获颇丰。读者的认可是顺其自然的东西，不必刻意追求。就像俞伯牙和钟子期“高山流水遇知音”的典故，情趣相投，必然相互欣赏。
在读书笔记的最后，分享给大家一个很有意思的小故事，我觉得与Zinsser所言有些异曲同工之处：有一次，我老师给一位古琴大师录音，摆话筒的时候老师跟他聊天，“我想把声场处理成面对面听琴的近距离之感，而不是在音乐厅演奏的大空间，您觉得好不好？”演奏家不说话。老师有些莫名，便转换了话题。等快要开始录音了，演奏家忽然说，“我觉得古琴是演奏给自己听的，不是给别人听的！”老师顿时释然了。
取悦自己并做到极致，不愁业不精、无人喝彩。
二. 字词
1. reminiscence
(1) 原文：Some hybrid mixture of history and reminiscence.
(2) 字典解释：a spoken or written story about events that you remember
(3) 造句：The book 《留德十年》 is a reminiscence of Ji Xianlin's overseas life in Germany.
2. pretensions
(1) 原文：My father, a businessman with no literary pretensions, wrote two family histories in his old age.
(2) 字典解释：a claim to be or do something 自称
(3) 造句：I make no pretensions to possess language talent.
3. terse
(1) 原文：I smile at his terse appraisals of Uncle X.
(2) 解释：简短的、简练的、简洁的
(3) 造句：His terse reply ended the conversation.
4. dodge
(1) 原文：In his family history my father didn't dodge the central trauma of his childhood.
(2) 字典解释：to deliberately avoid discussing something or doing something
(3) 同义词：evade
(4) 造句：If you dodge difficulties, you'll never make progress.
5. draw a veil over sth.
(1) 原文：Until that decade, memoir writers drew a veil over their most shameful experiences and thoughts.
(2) 解释：避而不谈，隐瞒
(3) 造句：He drew a veil over what happened last night.
