Grady's People - Unforgettable Characters in the Top of the South Island

The first of four books collecting stories from Don Grady's newspaper columns. Each chapter is the story of a different person from the top of the South Island of New Zealand - so basically Nelson, Marlborough, top of the West Coast and some down as far as the Molesworth.
For me this is a bit hit and miss. A massive fifty seven stories. If I had to invent statistics off the top of my head I would say ten were excellent reads, another twenty were interesting reads, a further twenty were ok, and probably work as human-interest newspaper column stories, which leaves around seven which were just... not interesting.
So will I hunt out the other three books? Probably not.
I think the appeal of the newspaper column is the local angle - if so many of these people were not already dead (he does tend towards older persons), then they would potentially be the ‘slightly weird person' they see on the road occasionally, or the nutter in the homespun jersey who you see picking up supplies once every two months. So without the local knowledge it loses its connection a bit.