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Let me start by saying: I am not a wine drinker, let alone a wine afficiando. I drink a glass at holidays when my FIL brings some. That said, I enjoy books where the author is writing about something they are passionate about, for a lay (mostly) audience and enjoy food writing.

I struggled through the first part of this book, roughly overlapping with the part that focused on France. While it was talking about wine area and wine making, I had a hard time working through the French words and figuring out was a proper name (and for what) and what was a concept. There was a lot of describing geography using other geography. However, there was just enough of interesting insights and comments and history that I decided to keep on.

I am very glad I did. Once he left France the vocabulary changed, and I could follow along easier. There are plenty of references back to France but in different context. While he certainly describes individual wines, he spends more time describing the history of areas and the people involved, and life adjacent to wine (food, company). My favorite essay is about birthdays--and how hard it is for a wine afficianado to be born in a year that is a particularly poor vintage. Soon after was the one on wine class in Germany--including people lost in the cellar.

The push and pull of regulations and appelations and innovation come through in many places, as did history lost or savored. The cooperation more than competition in any given area--the wineries need all wine from a given area to be similar quality or it hurts the better ones--was interesting (though disagreements happen). He has clearly been around wine for decades and brings a long experience to writing about the industry. I learned many things and, once I wasn't lost in a sea of European names/ geography and concepts expressed in French, I enjoyed the book.

Short, and yet I had to stop and pause between several of the essays to think about what I read. I also laughed several times--something I rarely do when reading humor, but this humor is simply life as it is, and feels relatable and natural rather than the point. I did not get all the literary references (ok, I didn't get a lot of them) because I don't read classic English literature, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the essays. Marrying Libraries was a fantastic start--and despite the best line being what caused me to pick up this book when quoted in another one, it offered plenty more to be worth reading it, and the quoted paragraph was even better as part of the essay. Did I love them all? Of course not. But I enjoyed them all, and several I want to read to my family. It is well worth the read by anyone who enjoys books and language. An excellent mix of "facts" and life and a good dose of life-is-fun-and-funny as well.

I was directed to this book when it was quoted in The Book on the Bookshelf. It leaves me conflicted. On one hand, my conclusion when I finished was I need to get my own copy. It was a fabulous journey through a variety of attitudes towards books. However, it was also frustrating--things were referenced in text but not shown in the photos. The people weighed very heavily to the arty city type--artits or decorators and such in NYC and such--where were the engineers? the mid-town folks (and not as one of their houses). The organization was interesting--I read through the first few and decided my inability to make my shelves look nice was simply inherent to bookshelves, as all of theirs were even worse. But later chapters had people with more presentable looking books.

The text was, honeslty, more interesting than the photos. The photos were nice, but they didn't always give as good a feel of the library as the text did--too much on the art style, to little on the topic? That is not quite fair to the text--the text stands on its own quite fine, the only problems being when it references something as if it was in a photo...and it isn't. Well written and fun with good quotes and glimpses into the motivation and feeling of the various libraries.

My favorite parts, though, were the short trips to bookstores and unique libraries (mountain climbing!). They were the most unique and fun and little bits. An entire book of them would be too much, but as little palate cleansers between more deep dives into the thoughts around books--they were delightful to come across, and I am very glad she included them.

This book alternates between light hearted comics and science prose chapters. Wrinkles the brain is looking for the Magic Eye he lost somewhere in human imagination. Along the way he'll eat a thousand years of little mini wrinkles with Darwin, fight a giant robot eye with a cow-themed superhero, and meet Clio the muse of history-my favorite character-- (and Cassandra the blind fish). The comics are fun on their own, and I admit my first read through I skipped all the non-comic bits, but they all have some bit of science in there somewhere. Darwin is the predator that attacks such that an eye is adaptive, and you can beat an atomically accurate eye if you know how to swim and stay in the blind spot. The science prose digs in to really explain what's going on. While the prose chapters kinda look like textbooks, they are the well written kind. My only complaint with the book is the ending was a little lame--if that's what was going on, why didn't they just make 3? :P (I guess the grant only covered one?) Recommended as an entertaining lark through part of science I didn't know I wanted to read about!

I enjoyed the book, I'm glad to have read it. It had enough relevant content for a book (his book on pencils felt stretched), which was nice. The fact books used to be shelved with the spine in was fascinating, but made sense after reading this book. That said, he more than once started rambling on an opinion presented as a given. (To be clear, I didn't mind where he told a personal story--those overall were smoothly interwoven and often good transitions.). The illustrations were complimentary and useful--he needed a few more; there are places where a picture could have saved a lot of awkward description. It wandered between book history and bookshelf (or book press--I do like having that term now, as bookshelf is unclear between the multi-shelf thing and a single shelf on it), but that's because they evolved together! An easy read with lots of fascinating historical tidbits throughout. A bit rambling, but not too bad. He found interesting quotes from various times and sources. In an unfortunate twist, reading one book has added two more to my to-be-read list!

This feels more like a celebration of hobo'ing than an actual chronicle or history, given the little bit the author spends on the negative aspects and impacts (both to the hobos and to the communities). I will say, it is convinient that if you define hobo as "migrant worker" then you can define anyone who doesn't want to work as "not a hobo". The individual stories are a fascinating look into the subculture as seen/remembered by those involved.

If you read the individual memories, though, it becomes clear there was some simplification and rose-colored glasses placed on the first summary section, and probably the stories told by those still involved who want to be seen as "good guys" (vs the bums who don't/can't work).

I did not know that around the depression they were the migrant farm workers in the midwest--before everything was mechanized. Nor that some of them at least were skilled workers who just went from place to place and stayed til they decided to roam again or the seasons changed.

Were there women or just a couple? Were they safe? Were younger teens mentored or abused by older hobos? Did hobos only work except in dire straits (well, they all talk about asking for handouts at businesses, though often for stuff heading to the garbage, so that's still a toss up.). The truth is probably stronger in the individual stories than in the pancea to hobo life by the author at the start.

It's important history to have recorded, but her interpertation of it has some rose colored gloss applied, as well as being a bit repetative.

A perfectly nice coffee table book. It has nice photos, engaging text you can jump in at pretty much any point, and a cover that has a spinner based on one of the toys. For someone who knew none of the history it was an interesting read. In a couple places the author referenced a prize that wasn't photographed--I wish he hadn't done that. Either don't mention it or show a photo. The photos are well done. It is arranged chronologically and with more history at the beginning and less details as the company stopped making as many major changes. There are not enough captions/details or completeness of prizes to satisfy a collector, but that is not its purpose or goal, so it is invalid to hold it against the book. Aas a lay person just interested in history, I enjoyed it and it was a fairly short read with pretty photographs.