The Valley of the Moon

Well written story and one can learn from it.

Great story

This was an interesting story of California and it’s complex industrialization and farming past. As a product of its time there is certainly racist language that it difficult to hear. It is an excellent history of agriculture (and early factory farming), labor unions, immigration and the artist colonies near Big Sur. It’s also a dreamy love story but the story of Billy and Saxon is secondary to the story of California. Fantastic narrator!

Richard Kilmer can’t be beat.

It is difficult to comment on this book. On the one hand it is a modern fairytale of finding love, life and happiness. On the other hand it is a very long book. It contains all Jack London's views on love, life, socialism and many other topics. The narrator has a very "flat" style of telling, and it becomes boring during 19 hours.

I chose this book because I live in California and thought it would be interesting. It is probably a realistic portrayal of lifestyle back then, but I didn't realize that it was rated for children until I got a fair way into it. The reader's cadence was very s-l-o-w so I listened at 1.25 speed. If I'd had a physical book, I'm sure I would have skimmed and skipped some paragraphs along the way because the London's writing was a bit long-winded making the whole thing that much more drawn out. That said, I finished it and enjoyed the story.

What a complete waste of time, I'm not a person who can easily give up on a book. I'm an eternal optimist and I persevered to the end hoping it would get better but alas no ???? I know that in Jack London's time, racism was much more common and but the amount in this book made me very uncomfortable at times. The story is unexciting when compared to White Fang or Call of the Wild if like me you are expecting that then like me you will probably be disappointed. On the plus side Jack London's ability to describe things in such a way made it very easy to imagine Saxon, Billy and their travels but it was unable to save the mundane storyline