Customer Rating:  
Summary: The Good Life ??
Comment: I have enjoyed reading this book, and it is well written and very funny in places as the story leads you on through the Viner's family experiences.
However I must agree with another reviewer, that the constant reference to all their friends does become very tiresome.
Fortunately I do not have anywhere near this number of friends and when I achieve my goal of moving to some rural escape, the last thing I will want is hoards of friends and their kids descending on me every weekend
Never the less it is well worth reading if you shelter any desires to make the move out of a big town or city, but there are less self gratifying books on the subject.
Customer Rating:
Summary: If you read this, then read this.
Comment: There's an entire genre of 'moving to the countryside' books, what publishers like to call 'settlement non-fiction'. The books are normally written to commission, it's a genre I had never explored or read before I wrote my own book, which I suppose I have to now admit, belongs in some way to this genre.
This is clearly one, and I haven't read it. So I who I am I to argue with the reviewers, hence the 5 stars.
But if you do read this book, then try A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY: In Search of a Rural Dream.
I'm biased, because I wrote it. Well and widely reviewed, it is sinking like a stone; there you go.
Perhaps the best is The Engima of Arrival by V.S Naipaul, luckily a book I only read after I had finished mine. I think I could have called mine The Enigma or Arrival and should have been tougher about resisting my publisher's insistence on a subtitle, which all these books seem to have.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Comment: A well written (unsurprisingly) book about moving from London to north Herefordshire. Full humour, surprise andhonesty. Mr Viners - sometimes - self-depricating humour is well suited to this story of starting a new life.
The lessons he learns, the new projects and animals he and his family take on and the struggles they overcome are all wonderfully told.
A book full of love for his new life and full, too, of anecdotes, jokes and sometimes incredulity.
Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Comment: Last month, I spent two weeks in the south of France with my partner. I'm not really much of a reader and often spend a lot of my time on my computer, wasting my evenings away, or out socialising with friends. I would often buy books but I never get round to reading them. However my partner is very keen on reading so I thought these two weeks would be the perfect opportunity to read a book I bought two years earlier in Leicester train station, Tales of the Country.
As soon as I started reading this book I could not put it down. I was in stitches with Viner's witty jokes and hilarious tales and antics. I often relayed many of the book's jokes back to my partner who struggled to finish her book due to my constant interruptions.
If you like a book to make you laugh then this is a must.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Buy this book!
Comment: Brian Viner has a lightness of touch and a self-depracating wit, and this warm and funny chronicle of his move from London to the country is a delight. It's a great read, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
|
