Review: Great photos, but hardly an A-Z guide
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 11, 2013
I must preface my review by disclosing that I received this book as a free member giveaway through LibraryThing.Apart from the fact that I wasn't aware at the time I put my name down to win a copy of the book that it was only Volume 1 of 2 volumes, I was also somewhat surprised to find it only contains 27 varieties of rose, and has only 51 pages. Even the totally uninformed reader such as myself must be aware that there are hundreds if not thousands of different varieties (a quick internet search revealed over 700 different varieties of roses sold in Australia alone), so the book itself has only a rudimentary coverage of the topic, rather than being a real A-Z guide.On the other hand, the photos are excellent and seem to be mainly of the flowers "in the wild" or at least in the garden, rather than the standard "flower in a pot" photo. There are also a few small poems to add some additional "colour" to the photos. Some description of all the varieties included, such as (for those with more interest in being potential gardeners than myself) hints on how best to grow them or where they can be found, would have been nice. Just the variety name and some photos is not really very informative.Also, as I said I am pretty much the average uninformed male when it comes to flowers in general, so I was very surprised to see that many of the varieties in the book do not look at all like what I would expect a rose to look like. I have now learned that the stereotypical image of the rose is not necessarily anything like what many varieties look like.