Atlas encyclopédique mondial : Tous les pays de A à Z

Right, so I haven't played every single song from this songbook, but I have gone through and played a bunch, basically all the ones I recognized. This songbook is okay. It's good (maybe even great) for a beginning guitar student, who would benefit from lots and lots of generally charismatic songs using open chords. If you've mastered open chords and bar chords, you'll find most of the songs not very challenging. They're all just combinations of the same three open chords: A, D, E. Sometimes A-minor. That's fine. I think this is useful for (a) warming up with some easy, fun song (hello, House of Rising Sun) and (b) building a repertoire of “should I need to break out my guitar at the campfire or dinner party” songs.

One more frustrating aspect of the book, though, is that a lot of the songs are in the wrong key - and I'm guessing this is because Shipton was just trying to keep things reeeeal simple. But, dude, not every single song in the history of baby boomer rock is literally an open chord at the top of the neck. It's like Shipton assumed that the reader was (a) still struggling with bar chords (fair; I think the book's great for a starting guitarist, as I said), and (b) doesn't own a capo? So that kinda sucked. I kept doubting my (tinny) ear but, when playing along to the songs on Spotify, it was confirmed that some of the keys are way wack - and some of the chords are also weirdly wack (“Help” by the Beatles is one example of this, it sounds kiiinda right when you play it alone - though that G chord is weird - but try playing it with the actual Beatles version, yo that is wrong wrong wrong).

So, decent for beginners. Okay for “intermediate” players. Not super challenging.

Also, why is all guitar culture pitched towards mainstream baby boomer dudes? This is my main beef, since picking my guitars back up after many years. >:/