At Home by Bill Bryson

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was interesting and entertaining but wanders way off topic in every chapter. It's supposed to be an explanation of the wheres and whys of domestic things say, a room just for sleeping, or a dining table. The bulk of each chapter is just interesting history and sometimes really only trivia of the era. Towards the end, he doesn't even make a pretense at explaining domestic things anymore and simply titles a chapter on Darwin's revelation of evolution "The Attic." I couldn't find any connection.

Also, it wouldn't let me flee my other current read Moby Dick, as the lighting section of the book spent a fair bit of time describing spermaceti and a later chapter explained how the novel Moby Dick itself was a product of the scientifically descriptive era in which it was written.

There are so many interesting gems though. Here's a favorite quote:
“Over the course of his life, Harvard had acquired books at the rate of about twelve a year. Jefferson, over the course of his life, bought books at the rate of about twelve a month, accumulating a thousand every decade on average. Without his books, Thomas Jefferson could not have been Thomas Jefferson. For someone like him living on a frontier, remote from actual experience, books were vital guides to how life might be lived…”

Another gem [[[spoiler alert!!!]]] is that the buttons on the back of the sleeve of a jacket are useless and always have been!



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