2 books down 1 to go

I've readed 1.5 of my three books. I'll start with how much I liked the first one, and end with a rant about how much the second book annoyed me.

Book 1: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
It seemed like it would be a bummer reading about a 10 year old boy wandering NY looking for clues about his father who died on 9/11. Nonetheless, I had heard many good things about this book, and I was happy to discover that it was much better than I imagined. The book was smart, funny, beautiful, and sad. I have a short attention span, so it's hard for me to concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time. Last Wednesday I sat and read this book for 5 straight hours. It was that good.

Book 2: At Home in the Heart of Appalachia by John O'Brien
I read an interview with the author a few years ago and I have been wanting to read this book since then. The book is a memoir of a man whose father was from West Virginia. O'Brien visited WV as a child, went to college at West Virginia University (me too, Go Mountaineers!), and now lives there as an adult. Honestly, I only read the first 3 chapters and skimmed through the rest of the book. My problem with the book is that he doesn't seem to understand West Virginia. Maybe it's because I've seen them and lived within them, but his descriptions of the landscape and people don't have any impact on me. I think his book would be more impressive to someone who didn't know what he was writing about. Also, he spends much of the book trying to understand the "heart of Appalachia" and trying to define the place and the people. The author writes about many things West Virginian and Appalachian, but he doesn't seem to understand what he's writing about.
I've written about my table to give you a sense of how he writes about Appalachia.
"I see the Table at which I'm sitting. It's wooden, and has a flat top and four legs. There are also chairs around it. I like to sit in one of those chairs at this wooden Table with four legs, but I've never understood what a Table really is. What is a Table and what draws me to sit at it every day?"
I didn't read the whole thing, so it may get better. I'll give it another shot in a few years.
I did enjoy when he mentioned the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. In the early 90s I was dubbed a Knight of the Golden Horseshoe by the Governor of WV. I still have the golden horseshoe to prove it. It's amazing the things people will give you just for knowing all of the counties in the state.