Noventa Por Ciento De Todo (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
I can't say enough good things about this book.First, the obvious: The book gives a rich, informative look at an industry that is astonishingly pervasive and virtually invisible. Workers are mistreated, wages are cut, pirates are the reality, and so on. Even in the best of circumstances, a shipper's life is a hard, lonely one that nonetheless is basically responsible for our modern society of luxury goods. Because of this book and the author's obvious love for the topic, I've added a "shipping news" feed to my reader.But lots of books are informative. I was really drawn to the prose in this book. The style follows the familiar "use a narrative thread as a trunk for launching off into details" format of many a feature article, but it's skillfully done. I worried about this format for the length of a book, but Ms George's prose manages to tuck gently into the background and skillfully carry the reader along. She's not a showy writer, but I mean this as a deep compliment. It takes as much -- perhaps more -- skill to make your text invisible as it does to make it stylized. It's also clear that she's done extensive research, and her "launching offs" glimmer with hard numbers and facts.So I've not only added her other books to my queue, I also took note of books she mentions in the text so that I can look them up. If she thinks well of them, they're clearly worth looking at. Rose George writes books that make me realize how little I know about the world around me. I consider myself fairly well informed...and then I read her books and realize that, like Jon Snow, I know nothing. And I love that about her books. She shines a light on things like toilets or the shipping industry, things that impact our lives in such a fundamental way that without them we wouldn't be who we are or live the lives that we live. I'm ashamed how little I knew about the human beings whose jobs on board these ships make my life possible.
What do You think about Noventa Por Ciento De Todo (2014)?
Entertaining exposure to the invisible world of shipping. More well-written than expected.
—Rachel
