To try to understand this most incomprehensible state, we need varied and probing narratives, ones that change as Florida changes and are told by people who love the state too deeply to refrain from blistering criticism. Into this role steps the native South Floridian memoirist Kent Russell with his sharp, brilliant, mean, and exasperating hybrid book.

In his off-kilter adventure story/cultural history In the Land of Good Living, Kent Russell says he doesn't want to pander to those who filter their ideas of the Sunshine State through the absurdist lens of Florida Man memes. Yet he seldom seems to be more generous in his portrayal of his fellow Floridians.

... it is wildly uneven—with flashes of brilliance that are too often bogged down by half-baked analysis, clunky mega-words and, most disappointing of all, muddy writing.

...he fills in details about everything from oystering in Apalachicola Bay (and why you’re unlikely to get a real Apalachicola oyster anyplace else), to the shady origin story of Disney World.

Hold on to your hat. This book will take you on a bumpy ride.

If Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion had produced a literary offspring, a young man whose older brother was Bill Bryson, his writing might sound something like Kent Russell's. That's the spirit that infuses In the Land of Good Living: A Journey to the Heart of Florida, Russell's entertaining, often deeply reflective portrait of his uneasy relationship with his native state.

...a extraordinary tale of insane choices, the surreal feeling of Florida, and a months-long, 1,000-mile trek cross-state.

Whether hauling shrimp, being greeted at gunpoint, or interviewing Jesus in an off-white robe at Epcot Center, Russell writes of his home state with the affectionate exasperation of kinship. His rollicking style is interspersed with screenplay-like scenes that capture the punchy back-and-forth between the three men, their trip as changeable and open to reinvention as the great state they set out to capture..

A picaresque, amiable ramble through arguably the weirdest state in the country.

In this enjoyable travel memoir, a long-departed son of the Sunshine State returns with two buddies to explore the nation’s weirdest state.