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drifterontherun 's review for:
Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
by Joan Druett
Yes, Goodreads — "I'm finished!" "Finished!" with all the emphasis and excitement (or, in this case, exasperation) that the exclamation point bears. Finished, like Jesus on the cross, exhausted, full of pain and despair, uttering one final breath before giving up the ghost.
A book so dry, so lifeless, concerning a subject that is anything but! Oh, by the fates, how!
Maritime historian Joan Druett relied heavily on the journals of survivors to compose this, copying and pasting far too much for my liking, so that what we have here is some dead thing, long since decomposed. An exercise in the most tedious sort of boredom, which is a pity as a finer nonfiction writer — Erik Larson or John Berendt, say — would have turned this into a truly riveting account.
I find it necessary to pick up and read anything with "island" in the title — view my "read" list if you don't believe me — and Druett has other words I fetishize in there too, like "edge of the world," "shipwrecked," and "lost," but the only wreck here is this account, which lacks the excitement of the ingredient list on the Nutella jar sitting beside me now (seriously, "Soy lechthin as emulsifier" — do I even want to know, Ferraro??)
Did you know that the Nutella sold in the United States is different than the one you can find in Europe? It's true! According to Eat This, Not That! American Nutella is "far oilier and more mildly flavored."
As if that wasn't enough, did you know that "A quarter of the world's hazelnuts end up in Nutella"? 25%!! Insane!
And you may have heard of the 2017 Nutella heist in Germany, which saw thieves make off with 20 TONS of Nutella and other chocolate. All told, $80,000 worth!
Funny enough, that wasn't even the first time thieves in Germany (where they must really love their Nutella) made off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of the stuff. In 2013, five TONS of Nutella disappeared in the central German town of Bad Hersfeld, leading to rumors of a Nutella black market.
A Nutella black market!!
All of which leads me to believe that the stuff Ferraro sells in the EU has to be better than the Nutella you can get here, as I've never heard of anyone trying to steal Nutella stateside — and that's certainly not because Americans are more law abiding, because we're clearly less so.
For best results, do not refrigerate or microwave, and don't even bother picking up this book.
A book so dry, so lifeless, concerning a subject that is anything but! Oh, by the fates, how!
Maritime historian Joan Druett relied heavily on the journals of survivors to compose this, copying and pasting far too much for my liking, so that what we have here is some dead thing, long since decomposed. An exercise in the most tedious sort of boredom, which is a pity as a finer nonfiction writer — Erik Larson or John Berendt, say — would have turned this into a truly riveting account.
I find it necessary to pick up and read anything with "island" in the title — view my "read" list if you don't believe me — and Druett has other words I fetishize in there too, like "edge of the world," "shipwrecked," and "lost," but the only wreck here is this account, which lacks the excitement of the ingredient list on the Nutella jar sitting beside me now (seriously, "Soy lechthin as emulsifier" — do I even want to know, Ferraro??)
Did you know that the Nutella sold in the United States is different than the one you can find in Europe? It's true! According to Eat This, Not That! American Nutella is "far oilier and more mildly flavored."
As if that wasn't enough, did you know that "A quarter of the world's hazelnuts end up in Nutella"? 25%!! Insane!
And you may have heard of the 2017 Nutella heist in Germany, which saw thieves make off with 20 TONS of Nutella and other chocolate. All told, $80,000 worth!
Funny enough, that wasn't even the first time thieves in Germany (where they must really love their Nutella) made off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of the stuff. In 2013, five TONS of Nutella disappeared in the central German town of Bad Hersfeld, leading to rumors of a Nutella black market.
A Nutella black market!!
All of which leads me to believe that the stuff Ferraro sells in the EU has to be better than the Nutella you can get here, as I've never heard of anyone trying to steal Nutella stateside — and that's certainly not because Americans are more law abiding, because we're clearly less so.
For best results, do not refrigerate or microwave, and don't even bother picking up this book.