having now read most if not all of this series, this one is one of the best of them. Good mystery, good characters, good plot, excellent setting, good writing that doesn’t seem forced. I think I complained about the last one I read, that the writing was too often forced and the mystery and explanation was weak. Well, not this one. Whew! I really enjoyed them all. Makes me want to fox hunt.

I can imagine that GK has seen all of this that he wrote about—contains the same kernel of verity that Lake Wobegone does. We all know those characters in some form.

The ending was week, the premise that this guy was shutting them down but then, of course, their getting shut down was bigger than one guy. I mean, I got it but it was weak.

I thought Woody Harrelson was the best. And he delivered my personal favorite punch line: “Can you really breathe through that?”

A quirky story about what family really means. That would be why so many people just don’t get it.

My favorite line is when the teenager, having a meltdown, screams, “I hate you all! Look at you! Losers! Divorced, bankrupt, suicide!” And it was true. By all external standards, losers. Huge scars and mistakes. They are dealing with everything we all deal with. Failure, pornography, addiction, rejection, ambition, finances, aging, everything. But in the end, they are all winners and a family, a loving family, not just a collection of selfish individuals.

Yep, I loved this film. Great story, outstanding acting, terrific morality tale.

I don’t remember how many of these I’ve read at this point, and I haven’t read them in order, and I’ve enjoyed them . . .

But . . .

after this one my feedback would be: terrific recurring characters, fascinating (to me) setting, weak stories, weaker still “mysteries” (not fleshed out and do not hold together), and sometimes stilted writing (like she’s reaching for a wordy alliterative description).

For example, in this one, in the short “explanation” chapter for the murder mystery, the murderer is first said to have shot her before she knew it, and then to have forced her to give him some information before he shot her. It was just weak. But the characters were wonderful. So there ya go.

Yeah, I’ll still read the rest of them.

He is an enjoyable enough writer. Except that sometimes he explains terms and sometimes he doesn’t which was occasionally infuriating. And unless it is different for horses and people, he uses the term “placenta previa” totally erroneously—for him that means being born in the cowl rather than having the placenta blocking the cervix. But I learned a lot and got caught up on a lot of things that I needed caught up on. And his humor is sometimes actually amusing!

I suppose this book is ok since it is only written in order to promote tourism for a very specific state thingie. Ok, really, the whole thing basically s*cks for an actually local person EXCEPT for the 2nd CD. The music CDs included are wonderful. And since he follows the “road” from east to west, and since I’m a girl from the far west part of the road, it is the second CD that I actually really like a lot.

And I didn’t know Tom T. Hall, a rather interesting character himself, is now living in Scott County. He wrote Taking the Crooked Road Home which is on this CD.

And I am always proudly from Wise County, Virginia, thank you very much.

and I do love the subtitle but the book, mostly, was of such a skewed perspective as to not be worth reading.

What perspective? Liberal with a capital L Democrat Socialist Progressive perspective. Anything that might smack of, oh, conservative values (like music) was given amazingly short shrift, and anything that smacked of a progressive political perspective was declared to be “appalachian” even when the people he was profiling didn’t live in the mountains more than minutes (like most of his abolitionists . . . while he totally ignores the pro-South perspective that was and still is here which totally ignorant people please note—a pro-South perspective is not pro-slavery).

At least he did a decent job with the Wautaugans (even if he calls them by the wrong name) and the Over-Mountain Men who basically won the revolution for the Patriots. But that story was already well established for him to draw from . . . and his telling isn’t a really compelling one even at that.

sigh.

I always knew how to read, but I didn’t read for pleasure. Not until about 5th grade and discovering Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books. This was the very first one I ever read and I’m reading it again and I still love it. Thanks Walter! I don’t need no stinkin’ girl hero in a book—I identified with Alec just fine!

I just never really got into it, then it was time to turn it back in to the library. Maybe later.

excellent story. This one has a different hunt (description) in almost every chapter. I’ve never hunted but she makes me want to.