Sarah Vowell's Writing Style

Throughout this book, I often had a hard time understanding Sarah Vowell's main points due to her odd style of writing. One of the first things I noticed while reading this book was that there were tons of run on sentences. It seemed as though every page would have whole paragraphs that were just one sentence, which of course was a bit difficult to adjust to. Also, Vowell would often explain small things in great depth, while the really important points were at times under explained. At one point in the book, Vowell spent almost five pages explaining how John Winthrop tried to be kind even though he had to enforce rules. She did this by telling a story of how he let a banished man stay in Boston so he wouldn't freeze to death, how he let a poor man use his wood to keep a fire lit, and then she compared him to many other people throughout history. Although it may seem like she was just trying to put a lot of detail in, it seemed like a bit of overkill while I was reading. The last thing that I think is weird about her writing is that she jumps all throughout history in order to explain one small event. Because she couldn't stay in one time period for more than a page or two I had a hard time understanding what she was trying to say, and it often had me re-reading full paragraphs or even pages.