[Book Reviews] Three nonfiction, one fiction

[thewronghands]

Books (that I felt like reviewing) of September!

Comments

[randomdreams]

I have the shopcraft book near the top of my to-be-read pile. Thanks for the review.
The bicycling one sounds like it would strongly encourage me to not go do the same.

[thewronghands]

I look forward to hearing whether you like the shopcraft book or not... Mae is reading it now too, and I'm sending my copy in my next box o' books to ilcylic. So even though I don't have that make-things passion, I'm super interested in mapping the brains of those of y'all that do. [grin]

Re: the bicycling one, it made the trip sound super fun to me, heh. Even though when we hiked parts of the same route, it was in crazy wind and driving rain. But Ireland's not that big, so I bet it could be done. I have this book wishlisted but not yet purchased, it's about the bicycling side of it more than the music.

[randomdreams]

It's just that bragging about the hostility of the natives is offputting. I know that it's more a culture than anything else, but, man, just reading that made me feel uncomfortable.

[thewronghands]

Yeah, that's fair. I think he's hamming it up a little bit for his audience, but having the benefit of some of the previous context, I didn't actually think he was going to get his ass kicked. Not that people don't, but I'm not sure if he was enough of a cultural insider to be that guy, if that makes sense. That said, there were parts of Belfast where I really did feel that threatened, mostly because of family history. Mayhem was all "oh cool, let me get a photo of this mural!" and I was all "WE HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE, RIGHT NOW". But Mayhem didn't feel that way, and everyone that we interacted with there was perfectly lovely to us. It was just the ghosts of very present history.