The Food Of A Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait Of Food In Pre-World War II America (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
This review is for the audiobook edition.While I'm normally the guy screaming "make more books audiobooks!!", in this particular case I sort of which the publishers had chosen otherwise.First, the Narrator has a moderately annoying voice. Not the worst I've ever heard (not bad enough to give me headaches, like one author-narrator), but bad enough to make me want to turn the sound down and tune him out. I found myself struggling to listen to this book for more than 20 minutes or so at a time. Normally, I finish an audiobook of this length in about 2 weeks. It's been several months since I started this one (and have finished 5 other audiobooks, and started several others), and I just have to throw in the towel. This narrator is just *Rough* on the ears.Second, I think the format of the book *itself* isn't conducive to the audio format. It's essentially a cookbook, with a bit of extra historical information thrown it. It's really difficult to *listen* to a cookbook, and even worse that this ones organization makes very little sense. Probably on paper, it'd be fine. But as an audiobook I just spent a lot of my time being like "huh? what? wait. Let me rewind".Skip the audiobook and read the paper edition. I suspect I'd give the printed version of this book 4 stars, but it's been pretty ruined for me by this bad experience so I won't be attempting to read it again anytime soon. I understand the impulse to create this book, which is about half republications of WPA-era eating guides and half background on the creation of the eating guides. I found the background parts interesting and would have liked to see them expanded, but I found the food guide parts to be boring and pointless. Recipes for things I either don't care about eating or can't even get anymore don't really do much for me, and I think that the content could probably work fine as a summary rather than a straight re-publication.
What do You think about The Food Of A Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait Of Food In Pre-World War II America (2009)?
I found this very interesting, but it would probably only appeal to a limited number of people.
—0539sg
Very limited portrait (nonexistent) of Chicago and the Midwest.
—madmanmordo
Very interesting although a slow read.
—rachradiant
