Louise K. Nelson

This book was not really what I was expecting. You read "folklore" in the title, you expect a series of tall tales told in the day, or the strangest family stories passed down over time, or just old customs that might now be forgotten or altered. Instead, this book is a collection of the rememberings of the author during her life. We are treated to a series of stories about her life with her grandparents. And while some of the stories do mention certain customs and strange stories, the majority of the writings focus more on what the author remembers most fondly from her childhood. It's honestly more a memoir than anything else.

I enjoyed it well enough, but I feel most of the stories were focused on the wrong part. Where the author could have gone into greater detail about the way families used to have to mend their own shoes, she briefly mentions the method, then spends the rest of the time sharing how the tacks would come lose on their walk to church and hurt the children's feet. Also, several little personal tidbits like this are repeated in multiple places, which made the whole thing read as repetitive and took something from certain writings. Apparently, each individual piece was a column originally written for a newspaper. It's just a shame that the author didn't consider rewriting the individual stories to make something more fluid, less repetitive, and more engaging.… (meer)