The better name for this book would be: The list places I have visited, some people I have met, and not much else. Certainly Jack Vance tells very little of himself, and practically nothing of his writing. The book consists mainly about simple and short anecdotes about people no one has ever heard of in style of: “the hotel owner such-and-such was pretty friendly in some-or-other place. We used our car to take her to town, as she had no car of her own, and we got to be very friendly with her. We never heard anything about her later”. Doh. We also learn that he got stuck be a bee in some meadow, or him saw once a nice looking girl in some bar, with whom he fell in love instantly. The girl or the “love” are never mentioned again. The book feels like a stream of consciousness reminiscences. If you want to learn something about his writing, how he got his ideas, how he got published, what he was thinking when he was writing, or anything you usually are excepting when you are reading an author biography, you will be deeply disappointed. I thought that the first part of the book was boring. (There he mainly tells of several different jobs he worked on), and I was excepting to get to the interesting parts later when he started his career as author. However, the last part of the book was even worse. Who is interested about the list of places he has visited? The book doesn’t even work as a travelogue as he tells practically nothing about the places he mentions. This is most likely going to on the last place on my list of “related works” category - it is hard to imagine that any of other nominees could be worse. And certainly “no award” will be in the higher position. By far one of the worst things I have read this year.
200 pp
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