29. All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg

Category: 50 Books

29. All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg

I checked this one out for my dad to read cos it sounded like something he’d like. Everyone at the library said they had loved it and wasn’t he a good boy for buyin’ his momma a house? I think he’s really popular here because he’s from Jacksonville (or maybe Piedmont?) and people like to read about familiar places, and it’s always nice when a local boy does something good like, win a Pulitzer.

My dad loved this book and read it in two days, and my pops, he’s not a really fast reader. He just couldn’t put the book down. So I figured I should give it a go.

It took me weeks to finish this book. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good book. I just didn’t enjoy the reading of it. The first part of the book is Mr. Bragg talking about growing up poor (really poor) in the ’60s and ’70s in Alabama. This part of the book I did not enjoy. It was hard to read because it just wasn’t a happy story. Of course, stories and lives can’t always be happy, I get that. But the things that happened to the family gave me a stomach ache and I couldn’t read it for any length of time. So I’d read a couple pages here and there, and that’s why it took me so long to read it.

Dad would talk about how funny the book was, how the guy could really tell a story. It never seemed that funny to me. Even the parts that were supposed to be funny were overshadowed by the rest of the story to me. The book does end on a happy and hopeful note, and it wasn’t all sad. The last third of the book the author talks about his job being a newspaper reporter. This was, to me, the best part of the book. And this part seemed to have the best writing in it. So the last part of the book I was enthralled with and I totally read it in a matter of a few hours.

So like I say, it was a good book, but I did not enjoy it. And yes, he is a good boy for buyin’ his momma a house.

I would recommend this book to anyone who grew up in the south, or who enjoy biographies/memoirs.

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