This morning PopMatters posted my review of Aurelia C. Scott’s Otherwise Normal People:
This book delivers almost exactly what the title offers: A sympathetic, perhaps even sentimental, look at the slightly crazy people who organize their lives around rose competitions. If you imagine a non-satirical Best in Show, except with flowers, then you will have an almost perfect mental image of this book. The book is breezily charming, and, unless you are already an avid competitive rose enthusiast—and if you read PopMatters regularly I’m betting you’re not—it also might teach you something about roses.
It turns out, for instance, that when Gertude Stein said, “A rose is a rose is a rose,†she was lying.
Read the whole thing!