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Siobhan J's Reviews > Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother's Ruin Became the Spirit of London
Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother's Ruin Became the Spirit of London
by
by
This was a bad book.
Badly written, badly researched and badly presented. There wasn't a single footnote in the entire thing, sources are important if you're writing history!, and the bibliography at the end was a page and a half long. A page and a half long! I've written 3000 word essays with bibliographies longer than that. My dissertation, 10000 words and 70 odd pages, had a bibliography 4 times as long and still got (rightfully) criticised for not showing more research!
Granted, this book wasn't aimed at me. I'm an occasional drinker at most, while the author obviously loves gin with a passion that can best be called admirable. But I picked up this book because it promised history, and was annoyed when instead it only contained a lot of gushing about a drink with some anecdotes vaguely thrown in. If you want to write a book about how much you enjoy drinking, then by all means go ahead and have fun with it! But don't present it as a deep and historical look at London, that only leaves everybody feeling a bit disappointed.
(Also, jesus christ stop telling negative stories about sex workers with zero analysis. One can be excused, by the sixth I was starting to suspect a vendetta.)
Badly written, badly researched and badly presented. There wasn't a single footnote in the entire thing, sources are important if you're writing history!, and the bibliography at the end was a page and a half long. A page and a half long! I've written 3000 word essays with bibliographies longer than that. My dissertation, 10000 words and 70 odd pages, had a bibliography 4 times as long and still got (rightfully) criticised for not showing more research!
Granted, this book wasn't aimed at me. I'm an occasional drinker at most, while the author obviously loves gin with a passion that can best be called admirable. But I picked up this book because it promised history, and was annoyed when instead it only contained a lot of gushing about a drink with some anecdotes vaguely thrown in. If you want to write a book about how much you enjoy drinking, then by all means go ahead and have fun with it! But don't present it as a deep and historical look at London, that only leaves everybody feeling a bit disappointed.
(Also, jesus christ stop telling negative stories about sex workers with zero analysis. One can be excused, by the sixth I was starting to suspect a vendetta.)
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Gin Glorious Gin.
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Reading Progress
August 12, 2017
–
Started Reading
August 12, 2017
– Shelved
August 17, 2017
–
Finished Reading
August 25, 2017
– Shelved as:
stuff-i-hated
