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OK, I have come to turn over responsibility for my reading selection to good ol' Uncle Orson just about completely. He has almost never steered me wrong. The thing is that I don't have time to read crap that I sucks and so while I am sure that by following his recommendations I am missing out on many fine works, at least I don't have to worry about tossing a book down in disgust after wasting several hours.
Anywhoo, the reason I am posting is because a year or two ago I got a hold of one of the books that OSC has called one of his all time favorites. I was sooo excited to dig into it (I had just finished "Guns, Germs, and Steel and freaking loved it) that I actually closed my office door and sent all calls directly to voice mail. Anyway, I was pretty disappointed. While the material had the potential to be fascinating I found the book to be virtually unreadable. It seemed to flit from topic to topic without fleshing things out. The things is, I am confused. Every other time I have taken OSC's advice on non-fiction I have really enjoyed myself. Has anyone else read "The Lost Country Life"? What did you think? Is it me or is the book poorly written?
By the way, this is coming up now because I was going through the book review index OSC just created and I read a column that mentioned The Lost Country Life and all my frustration came rushing back.
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I have the book, but have never tried to just read it all the way through. I use it as a reference for old farming practices. Although, frequently, I continue reading past the specific part I looked up because the information is so interesting. I do that with dictionaries too, though, so I'm perhaps not the best example. I think I recall that OSC had praised it in the context of it being an excellent resource for fantasy writers.
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Yeah, it is just that when I read some of the other pieces of non-fiction that he has been so high on I was so richly rewarded, you know? I mean "Guns, Germs and Steel" really changed the way I see the world. I guess I was disappointed because I didn't like it as much as some others. It is odd, though, because I am really interested in the nuts and bolts of how older cultures lived on a day-to-day basis.
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