Mike’s Reviews > All Over But the Shoutin' > Status Update

I would honestly read a full memoir abut Bragg being a journalist. If this book had any focus, I honestly feel like it would be really good.

Even though this is not at all what this book promised, I honestly like the second half a lot better than the first.

Honestly, I think Bragg's adulthood is a lot more interesting than his childhood. Which is odd, because the cover and introduction suggested it would mostly focus on when he was a kid.

I guess this is going to be more of an autobiography than a memoir. Which would be fine, if the introduction didn't promise so much more than that.

This certainly isn't bad, don't get me wrong. Rick Bragg is a pretty good writer, and he does a great job of establishing the mood and tone of the south. It's just... eh. I could get a story like this from anyone who grew up in the south in the seventies.

I'm not sure if I quite understand the structure of this book. Bragg seems to be jumping around in time, without any real focus that I can discern. It makes it hard to figure out what's going on.

This is pretty well-written, but for some reason, I'm not wild about it so far. I'm not sure why. Maybe it feels a tad bit generic so far - I'm not sure why Bragg saw this as noteworthy enough to write a whole book about. But we'll see.

This is very well-written so far. That said, even though I haven't read a whole lot of memoirs, this one doesn't strike me as particularly noteworthy. I'm not sure where I get that feeling from, maybe it's because I keep finding myself tempted to write a New York Times-style blurb for the book jacket. But I probably don't have any basis to really back that up.