Back in town...

Apologies for a bit of a delay since my last post, I was on holiday and did not want to risk getting sand in my computer on the beach. I did however manage to mix in a bit of studying with all the sun and fun. I took one of the textbooks from university with me - Politics of the Common Law. I have to say that overall I am quite disappointed with it. I will admit that I managed to get only about 60% of the way through it but still it was rather a poor read. I would tend to blame the editors rather than the authors however for allowing the book to get out of hand. For example - there is a lot of talk about what is going to be covered, and then the material is not covered until much later. Not much value in continuing to tell you what is going to be covered, better to just get on with it. Also, how many times do we have to be hit in one chapter with the word "trope"? I am the first to admit that I am not 100% sure of the meaning but do I still need to be assaulted 5 times in the course of 20 pages? Finally, there is something in the book that I really find inexcusable - the use of the first person singular "I". Far too many personal musings of one of the authors which serves no purpose other than to take us down memory lane to his time at university. Really a big disappointment. I should say that the book is not entirely without merit, I do really enjoy a number of the in-depth case analyses which they present. Overall however I can not really see the merit of this book being included in the curriculum, I would hate to speculate that because the authors also occupying places of authority in the university they are motivated by some self-interest, I will leave that up to you to decide.