One of Hemingway's most noted stories is the foundation for an exciting internet meme known as "six word stories." A complete collection of books was published, called "Six Word Memoirs," in the vein of this challenge met by Hemingway. Likewise are Six Word Sci-Fi stories to be found on the internet.

This story went as such: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."

For those of you familiar with Hemingway's life, you may see this as being quite autobiographical. Likewise, you may also find A Farewell to Arms to be equally autobiographical.

Set during World War I (called The Great War), American Frederic Henry is caught up in the war on the Italian Front. He drives an ambulance, delivering wounded solders to the proper medical facilities. In his duty, he meets an English nurse named Catherine Barkley. The two fall in love.

The story chronicles their relationship, and how the raging war outside tries to tear them apart (though without the war, they would have never met). As things start to fall apart, the lovers in the war-torn world try to find a safe place. A neutral place.

Not all is happy, but at the same time, not all is sad. The novel, leaving a bittersweet taste in the mouth of the reader, is well worth the time and devotion spend traveling through its passages alongside Frederic and Catherine.

Recommended for any fan of Hemingway, but too for readers interested in fiction focusing on World War I. ( )

I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. I couldn't work up any interest in the main characters, what they could each see in the other was beyond my comprehension. ( )

I finished reading A Farewell to Arms on the bus this morning. The rest of the bus ride was depressing. It was raining. I suppose if there is one thing wrong with Hemmingway’s books, it is that you know how they all will end. A Farewell to Arms is no exception to this rule. While the book isn’t as depressing as For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I think is the saddest book ever written, it’s still pretty damn sad. I think as human beings we have a natural revulsion to the sorts of endings Hemmingway writes. Deep down I knew how A Farewell to Arms would end, once the story got going, but the ending your mind conjures up is so depressing you just can’t accept it as the probable outcome. So you read hoping for something else, a more typical conclusion to the story, and when you come to the end its like being punched in the stomach. -- http://funkaoshi.com/blog/a-farewell-... ( )

I always feel strange writing reviews for classics because, really, what the hell do I know? My high school was big on literary diversity so I never got to read the 'dead white guys'. I'm embarrassed to say that this is the first time I've read Hemingway. I can definitely see why he is such an important, influential author. His style is truly unique. His ability to write short, sharp, concise, yet powerful sentences is truly impressive. The minimalism seemed more pronounced in the beginning of A Farewell to Arms - it's possible that the style was so foreign to me that it was overwhelming at first, but it became less pronounced as I became more accustomed to it.

Surprisingly, there was a lot of humor in the book although some of it may have been unintentional. My general impression is that this book centers suffering as the normal state of life. Love, drink, food, games, are distractions but one will always go back to suffering.

As far as gender roles, I know Hemingway catches a lot of flack for being a dirty sexist, but I didn't see anything extremely offensive in this book. The main male character seemed like an exaggeration of 'maleness', that is, stereotypically male.( I feel like Hemingway writes male characters this way, his so-called 'Code Hero', because he himself is not stereotypically manly. This may be a baseless assumption but perhaps his characters were a type of wish fulfillment rather than an expression of himself.) The main female character didn't strike me as stereotypically female. The only feminist criticism that occurs to me is that the main female character seemed very concerned with pleasing the main male character even to her own detriment. But at the same time she seemed aware, more so than the male character, that their love was a fleeting game. She was happy to play house as a distraction (maybe that's the reason that she always put off getting married even though he suggested it early and often?) She did seem really two dimensional, but so did most of the characters, even the main male character. ( )

A depressing read. Jumpy style of writing - the book does have an unsettling feeling about ti throughout. For me, the way a book ends is 50% of its impact. How do plot lines get resolved? What is the aftertaste, hours after the book is finished? Reading this book I just KNEW there was bad stuff coming at the end, and sure enough it did. But it was very unsatisfying, with a number of unresolved plot issues and a feeling of having been robbed by the ending. ( )