Blogosphere Book Circle April Book: Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World 1783-1939
Author: James Bellich
James Bellich is a reknowned New Zealand historian and former Rhodes Scholar. He has written a number of award winning historical tomes.One of his books even got made into a television documentary series.
Confession time. I finally obtained this book from the library yesterday (there's a waiting list for it). And I flicked through it. And I sighed. It's an academic book. It's filled with pages of notes attributing the sources.It fills 560 pages not counting the 13 pages of index. I sighed again. It lost me in the title. I don't care enough. I couldn't do it.
And so, to make the people still on the waiting list happy I am returning it to the library tomorrow, unread, so they can read it.
Score out of 10 this month: Fail (that's me not the book!)
6 comments:
LOL! I confess it threw me a bit because I wasn't expecting such a treatise. But I did read all but the last couple of chapters.
Sounds interesting but I am reading enough academic books at the moment - might leave this one for a while :)
I had a good look at the reference only copy in our library & speed read the parts referencing only to NZ.
I think I've read every NZ history book the late Michael King wrote. He made history so accessible for me(like he's telling a great yarn), & at the same time ruined me for reading anything with a strictly academic 'voice', haha.
Also, I have a lot of technical reading to do for work on a continuous basis, so have decided to give Belich a miss.
LOL mine is due back this week and to be honest I wont finish it. I have started it, and even read a few chapters, but it's mind blowing. (read, it's the last book I pick up and I have read three books since I have had this one out).
Wow & to think there is such a long waiting list for this book at a lot of the libraries.
Not available at my library ... and I don't plan to source it anywhere else :) sounds like hard work
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