Booknote: To The Letter

Simon Garfield, To the Letter: a Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing. New York: Gotham Books, 2013. ISBN: 978-1592408451.

Genre: Nonfiction
Subgenre: letter writing
Format: hardcover
Source: My local public library. 

I really wanted to like this one, but the pace and prose were just too slow for me. In addition, the book had a lot of digression. It tries to weave a story, but then it skips around time periods. Very often this meant that as a reader you lost your thread. Additionally, the book had some distractions. For instance, the soldier letters between chapters were just a flat out distraction that broke the flow of the book, and to be honest other than showing off some old letters I am not sure what the point of those were. You can probably safely skip them.

Naturally, for the librarian in me, the bibliography at the end of the book was interesting, and I may seek out some of the books listed there down the road.

While the topic interests me, this book really did not engage me. It just dragged on and on. Fans of letter writing may find their experience with this book may vary, or they may want to consider other lighter books on the topic.

It was OK, so it gets 2 out of 5 stars.