My Life on the Blog

As I started reading Gloria Steinem’s “My Life on the Road,” I was already enjoying the book more than “Growing a Farmer.” I still found moments in which I would check the number of pages to see if I was almost done with a chapter. But then again, this book has seven chapters spanning about 250 pages. And even then, I still found myself reading the book at a more consistent pace. One comment I left on a random blog was that I believe that nonfiction books can work if they present their story through an interesting narrative or structure. If the book tells a story instead of giving very specific information, I think it can work, and this is exactly how “My Life on the Road” was.

Part of this reasoning is because Steinem doesn’t prolong on a topic as long as Timmermesiter does. I could follow her narrative, as she went through the topics that she discussed. She did mention vital parts, but she didn’t intricately go through every detail, leaving readers with enough information to understand each topic’s importance to her. Because this book has less chapters than “Growing a Farmer,” the topics were sectioned off into passages as opposed to a whole chapter. There are marking points or spaces between paragraphs that indicate a change of topic. Minor things such as having bullet points, italicizing words, or formatting conversations so they look like screenplay dialogue also make this book easier to read, as it shows ways to deliver different kinds of information, whether it’d be a list of stories or including a written letter. Even though the book isn’t one of the most enthralling books I’ve read and can even start to trail off slightly at some points, I think this will be a more enjoyable read, overall.