I enjoyed this book a lot. My only complaint is the lack of citations; I use those to compile my list of books to read. ( )

What a disappointing book.

I'm from Appalachia, and I've had some good homemade liquor (pronounced likker, and not lee-core or however you'uns say it), so I was honestly looking forward to reading this book. And it sucked. It sucked bad.

The author states that he is from the Shenandoah Valley originally, but he comes across as an outsider pretty quickly. Honestly, he seemed like a pretentious hipster who thought he was so fucking cool to be dabbling in making his own (still illegal) brew. You know the type - the ones who grow a beard and wear flannel and skinny jeans. Blech. And he just grated on my last freaking nerve until I could not tolerate him any longer.

He criticizes Popcorn Sutton's authenticity. Okay, he made some points. Popcorn was partially a character. But he was also more than partially the real deal. Popcorn was busted for making liquor and, facing hard time, decided to commit suicide rather than possibly die in prison. So criticizing a dead man's authenticity, especially coming from a hipster outsider, just rubbed me the wrong way.

He is dismissive of the Appalachian culture being separate. I'd argue on that one hard. My area of Ohio is a hell of a lot different from the rest of Ohio, from my accent to my values to the terms I use to describe things. Same goes for Appalachian Virginia versus coastal Virginia and metropolitan Virginia, etc, etc.

He likens himself to a "musicologist," which is actually pretty accurate, although I'm sure he didn't know it. What is a "musicologist?" To outsiders, that's someone who came into Appalachia and "preserved" our music for the outside world. In reality? A "musicologist" is an outsider who didn't know shit, who came into Appalachia under some misguided notion that they were going to "preserve our culture" like we couldn't do that ourselves and hadn't been doing that ourselves for generations, and often recorded our songs, our hymns, our culture and took it to the outside world to turn a profit on what was freely given. So, yeah, I can see him as a "musicologist."

And he's damned surprised that he bought painter's piss and it tasted, well, like painter's piss. Look here, you buy a baby jar of cheap liquor for a buck, and see what you get. Don't act surprised that it's not top shelf. That shit's made cheap and bought cheap and tastes cheap. Duh.

And the way that he thought he would just horn in on people who buy painter's piss. Nope. What a moron. Dude, I don't know in what hipster paradise you're living in now, but you do not go into a town with multiple nip joints with any desire to get into any of the nip joints. Nip joints are not places you want to be. They're selling illegal cheap shit and are liable to kill you and dump you where your body will never be found. But he gets this grand notion that he's going to just waltz into a nip joint and sit in some corner, like a fucking "musciologist" of old, and just watch the wonderful culture around him. Idiot.

Just writing this review makes me angry.

I don't have any alternate recommendations for those interested in real liquor culture and making, but I know for sure this isn't worth a drop of nothing. ( )

Confession: I only got 60 pages in. The guy's writing just couldn't hold my attention. ( )

Confession: I only got 60 pages in. The guy's writing just couldn't hold my attention. ( )

Confession: I only got 60 pages in. The guy's writing just couldn't hold my attention. ( )