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gerbieNumber: 04-007
Title: The road to McCarthy
Author: Pete McCarthy
Language: English
# Pages: 463 (1731)
Category: Travel
ISBN: 0-340-76607-7
McCarthy showed up on my Amazon recommended list. Apparently because I liked reading travel authors like Bill Bryson, Peter Moore and Paul Theroux, I would like McCarthy as well. So when last year I was in London and on my way to the cashier of the bookshop with a pile of books, I couldn’t stop myself from buying 2 more for a tenner from the table near the cashier. This was one of them. If I can get 3 pounds off, I’m done.
I’m afraid I am not putting McCarthy at par with before mentioned travel authors though. I have enjoyed reading this book, but it could have been a third shorter, perhaps even half. The idea is good, travel the world trying to find traces of ancestors everywhere. Every McCarthy must be somehow related. So you end up with a self proclaimed clan leader in Morocco, celebrating St.Patricks day in New York, on the trail of a criminal in Tasmania, in miners villages in the US, where almost everyone descends from Irish and also in a village in Alaska named McCarthy.
Plenty of anecdotes to tell, enough historical research and background to make it into a book, good observations on the world around him. All elements of a good book are there. I had to laugh out loud several times. Yet I couldn’t help getting bored with the book. It was too long, too predictable in the end, just too much.
Title: The road to McCarthy
Author: Pete McCarthy
Language: English
# Pages: 463 (1731)
Category: Travel
ISBN: 0-340-76607-7
McCarthy showed up on my Amazon recommended list. Apparently because I liked reading travel authors like Bill Bryson, Peter Moore and Paul Theroux, I would like McCarthy as well. So when last year I was in London and on my way to the cashier of the bookshop with a pile of books, I couldn’t stop myself from buying 2 more for a tenner from the table near the cashier. This was one of them. If I can get 3 pounds off, I’m done.
I’m afraid I am not putting McCarthy at par with before mentioned travel authors though. I have enjoyed reading this book, but it could have been a third shorter, perhaps even half. The idea is good, travel the world trying to find traces of ancestors everywhere. Every McCarthy must be somehow related. So you end up with a self proclaimed clan leader in Morocco, celebrating St.Patricks day in New York, on the trail of a criminal in Tasmania, in miners villages in the US, where almost everyone descends from Irish and also in a village in Alaska named McCarthy.
Plenty of anecdotes to tell, enough historical research and background to make it into a book, good observations on the world around him. All elements of a good book are there. I had to laugh out loud several times. Yet I couldn’t help getting bored with the book. It was too long, too predictable in the end, just too much.
