A slow burn: Wood Heat by John Vivian

Wood Heat by John Vivian is a book I came close to dropping many times. I know this may be shocking, but a book about heating your house with a wooden stove can be a bit boring. There were a couple of things that kept me coming back, and now that I have finished I am satisfied. It's unlikly that I will ever need the information. My place has a fireplace, but I have been here for two winters and I have never started a fire in it. But I kept at it, and now I will tell you about it. 

I earlier mentioned the couple of things that kept bringing me back. The first the origin of the book. I acquired this book from the estate of my Grandfather. He didn't have very many books. Many of them were either things he had inherited from his father, mostly chess books. This one is practical, and I can actually imagine him consulting this book. His house in rural Wyoming was in poor condition by the end, and I can imagine him looking to get some repairs done and consulting this book for ideas. It is a little point of connection to him, one that I did not have much of when he was alive. That idea is probably just a pleasant fantasy, but it is sweat to have. Family can be very funny. 

The second thing that kept me coming back was that it was occasionally very interesting. The book was written in 1976, so the energy crisis is prominent. John Vivian loves wood heat, and he confidently predicts the downfall of other forms of heating. The cost comparison he runs is very amusing. Inflation really hits hard. His passion really shows through. It is not enough to make flue repair interesting. There are occasionally some really interesting tidbits, but it is not enough to make the book worth reading. Unless you are homesteading, or the apocalypses has happened I would not recommend this book. Occasionally interesting is one of the worst things for a piece of media to be. The repeated promise of something good in the next chapter or episode is one of the worst as it robs you of time. I should have dropped this book long ago.

So lets move on. This time, I think I will go back to the old ways. Fully random, all the way. There has been a few more book shelves added since last time. We are up to 25 bookshelves. I rolled up shelf 17 and book 23. That happens to be The Father of us all: War and History Ancient and Modern. by Victor Davis Hanson. This is a collection of Victor's writing on the topic of war and history. This will be an interesting read because Victor has transitioned from being a serious historian to a conservative pundit, and this book is from after that transition happened. I expect to find plenty to disagree with.