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hmcgivney 's review for:
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
by Bill Bryson
DID NOT FINISH
I'm calling this one done. I read the first 225 pages, and then started to skip over the topics that didn't interest me. I think I probably read about 65% of the whole.
I found the conceit of using the rooms in Bryson's house to tell the history of private life to be extremely annoying. Some chapters were interesting: the kitchen, where he talked about the history of food markets, etc.
But some chapters were wasted in my opinion - for example, the study. I thought this would be about the history of printing, or publishing, or book collecting, but no. Since Bryson uses his study as a storage room and only goes in there to check mouse traps, the chapter is about the history of household pests: mice, rats, bugs, etc.
Some of it was interesting, but the framing device was a poor choice, in my opinion.
I found the conceit of using the rooms in Bryson's house to tell the history of private life to be extremely annoying. Some chapters were interesting: the kitchen, where he talked about the history of food markets, etc.
But some chapters were wasted in my opinion - for example, the study. I thought this would be about the history of printing, or publishing, or book collecting, but no. Since Bryson uses his study as a storage room and only goes in there to check mouse traps, the chapter is about the history of household pests: mice, rats, bugs, etc.
Some of it was interesting, but the framing device was a poor choice, in my opinion.