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qatsiBook Review: The Naked Shore - of the North Sea, by Tom Blass
There's been a hiatus in posting reviews for a couple of weeks, so I am a little bit behind. This came from the work book sale; it also came recommended in a "summer reads" section a couple of years ago. I may not have been in the best frame of mind to read it at this time, but I found it rather bleak. Of course, there is plenty to be bleak about, geographically and otherwise; but celebration of the North Sea was rarely to be found. The book jumps around, without a clear route around the various coasts, which doesn't help. Such a book must be selective, but it feels that quite a lot was omitted: although Grace Darling gets a brief mention early on, the substance of the book doesn't cover anywhere between Hull and Shetland, for example, and there's no mention of Norway. Sections on Heligoland and the Halligen were more informative - Blass is clearly interested in the various Frisian dialects scattered across the northern European coast - and Skagen was probably the high point of the book, but it feels less than thorough.
There's been a hiatus in posting reviews for a couple of weeks, so I am a little bit behind. This came from the work book sale; it also came recommended in a "summer reads" section a couple of years ago. I may not have been in the best frame of mind to read it at this time, but I found it rather bleak. Of course, there is plenty to be bleak about, geographically and otherwise; but celebration of the North Sea was rarely to be found. The book jumps around, without a clear route around the various coasts, which doesn't help. Such a book must be selective, but it feels that quite a lot was omitted: although Grace Darling gets a brief mention early on, the substance of the book doesn't cover anywhere between Hull and Shetland, for example, and there's no mention of Norway. Sections on Heligoland and the Halligen were more informative - Blass is clearly interested in the various Frisian dialects scattered across the northern European coast - and Skagen was probably the high point of the book, but it feels less than thorough.