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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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What I'm Reading - July/August 2017
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What I'm Reading - Sept/Oct 2017
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What Members Thought
Sorry to say this just did not go well from my personal viewpoint. I had an extreme reaction to this overall and cannot recommend it as being what it claims to be. It is one man's coming to terms with his own life, yes, but the theorizing on social aspects is sadly lacking in viable informative basis in fact in my opinion. Search out some good non-fiction on these things instead would be my best option to offer.
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This is really a 2.5 star book.
I found this book alternately interesting and exasperating. In the first chapter, Vance notes the incongruity of a 31-year-old writing a memoir. Would that he had thought a bit about that, benefited from the catharsis of getting out this jumble of memory, studies he's read, and inconsistent conclusions he draws, and then set it aside, to go back to it in ten or twenty years when life and a little distance would have taught him a few things. Or would that a kindly ...more
I found this book alternately interesting and exasperating. In the first chapter, Vance notes the incongruity of a 31-year-old writing a memoir. Would that he had thought a bit about that, benefited from the catharsis of getting out this jumble of memory, studies he's read, and inconsistent conclusions he draws, and then set it aside, to go back to it in ten or twenty years when life and a little distance would have taught him a few things. Or would that a kindly ...more
Finally got this from inter library Loan. I was very curious about the book t, as my dad was from Kentucky.
I thought this was a an extremely honest look at the author's own background and the grim circumstances that foster the dysfunctional behaviors that prevent so many individuals from succeeding in life. Lack of family structure is huge because it leads to so many other problems - alcoholism, violence, drug addiction, crime, loss of incentive... and on and on. That he somehow got through the ...more
I thought this was a an extremely honest look at the author's own background and the grim circumstances that foster the dysfunctional behaviors that prevent so many individuals from succeeding in life. Lack of family structure is huge because it leads to so many other problems - alcoholism, violence, drug addiction, crime, loss of incentive... and on and on. That he somehow got through the ...more
I tried really hard to finish this book, but let the book go after reading 25 percent of it. It's me, not the writer. The prose is functional and Vance's insights are meaningful, but I just can't read memoirs. I usually just want the Cliff Notes version, and that was true in this case.
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Feb 07, 2017
Heather
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