I tend to shy away from anything with a superlative in the title unless it's some band's “best of” album. Experience has reinforced this tendency. Unfortunately, I am here to report on another of those experiences. (I hate to give negative reviews, but I also hate to think that someone is going to buy a well-illustrated and authoritative-sounding book that leads them astray.)

I skimmed through he first few chapters and wasn't impressed (there was a lot of anecdotal and folkloric advice, which I find rather sketchy) but I wasn't totally turned off. My husband the logger finished the book he was reading and snatched this one out of my stack. The kvetching began.

Matt isn't as prone to complaint as I am, but he found plenty to complain about as he flipped through this book. “There's no dead man switch on a chainsaw,” he burst out from the couch while I was supervising the KitchenAid. “And an icy log won't freaking explode if you put it on the fire – it'll just make the fire go out.” So on and so forth.

He read a lot more of the book than I found time for, and his verdict was that while Ms. Faires was well-intentioned, she was also greatly misinformed.
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