Reviews for Notes on America

The average rating for Notes on America based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-12-11 00:00:00 Jimmy Barton I so wanted to like this book, but it was a real eye-roller. That's honestly the best way to describe it. And it's sad, because it is a travelogue of a trip that I'd love to take, basically following the US/Canadian border all the way from Maine to Washington state. And there are some interesting moments from Howard Frank Mosher's life woven into the narrative. All well and good. He introduced me to some historical tidbits that I didn't know. But somehow, every place he goes in this book he manages to meet the single most ideal representative of that place, and they say conspicuously perfect things about the places they live. It starts in the first chapter and never lets up. He goes to Lubec, a dying little fishing village on the Maine coast that used to be filled with sardine canneries, and somehow runs into an elderly gentleman named 'Elisha', who says things like this: "...in me own lifetime I've seen Lubec go from a prosperous seafaring port to a dying fishing village. I hopes for the best, me b'y. But I expects the worst...." Right. Then next he's in extreme northern Maine, in Madawaska, and who should he run into but a French Canadian named Ernest Chasse, who says: "Come in sir, come in! Welcome to the 'Louisiana of the North', as I like to call the Republic...." Hoo boy. This never ends in this book. Mosher talks about how much he hopes to see a wolf in Northern Minnesota. Spoiler! He sees one on the next page. I started audibly groaning about halfway through and never stopped. He even meets a cowboy who takes him on a cattle drive and tells him stories about Sylvie, his lost love, whose " ol' man whisked her back east in his Cadillac car with nary a goodbye a-tall...." Maybe Mosher figured he could just approximate what characters said, but what he came up with rings fake fake fake.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-04 00:00:00 Thomas Muccilli a bit too... i dont know.. yearning. but a good series of mini stories about mosher wandering across the border between canada and the US. best for seasoned mosher readers. offers insight into his early career and life, which is interesting, but only if you give a shit about his early career and life.