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Title: Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit ISBN: 0-14-028601-2 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 05 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.42 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Other reviewers lost their way
Comment: The worst that can be said of this piercing inquiry is that the broad forest of walking it depicts -- walking's effects on the pilgrim, the protester, the gawker in Las Vegas; its evolution from garden to countryside to modern city; its relation to writing and thinking itself -- left some readers bumping into the trees, and seeing only stars and not the bigger picture. But the bigger picture is here, laid out in stunning detail (she doesn't just say that labyrinths have made a recent comeback, but describes their makers and impacts in a variety of disciplines(art, garden design, spirituality) and countries, and what it feels like to walk on a replica of the Chartres labyrinth). I cannot recall reading a work that so seamlessly melded personal experience with a broad but profound reading of literature and history. Reminds me of Terry Tempest Williams, and in some of the same terrain. I'm headed back to read Solnit's earlier work "Migrations," about Irish history. I'll bet it's another forest well worth meandering through.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not pedestrian at all
Comment: When I walk, which is often, I like the serendipity of the experience, the unknown that meets me, the new perspective that greets me, the unexpected that grows from the experience. Reading this book has been like a walk.
At times I was enthused at what I read (on how Las Vegas is becoming more of a walker's world). At times I was encumbered with laborious literary chronicling of walkers and walking (the writings of Rousseau and Wordsworth). At times I was ecstatic with a simple relationship (the mind at three miles per hour). At times I was educated (the role of walking in the Paris revolutions). And at times I was given a new perspective (how women have dealt with the male's use of walking to control them).
While not quite knowing what to expect when I first saw this book, I thought it would be a great read because a history of something so common as walking could be so interesting. And this book is that. The author looks at the relationship between walking and thinking, between walking and culture, between walking and history, between walking and nature. And she delves into the interplay between walking and how the body uses it to jar the imagination and creativity to enable the walker to see the world around her in a different way.
The book drags at parts because I don't have a particular interest in that subject, just like at times a walk will become tedious. But, overall, this book is much like a walk: a discovery by accident.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Misnomer
Comment: "Wanderlust" is a German word meaning "joy of walking". Nowhere in the book could the joy of walking be found. Solnit creates a thin trail that connects walking with philosophy, politics, revolution, sexism, prostitution, and literature. Her disjointed rambles sidestep the topic with dull, uninteresting anecdotes that dissuaded this reader from turning the pages.
But there are pleasant intervals. The most interesting parts of the book are when Solnit writes of her walking experiences. Her first person narratives draw the reader into a lively cadence when she describes her inner-city walks in San Francisco, her pilgrimage to Chimayo and her people-watching jaunt along the Las Vegas Strip.
Solnit is a gifted writer who is extremely fluent. It's unfortunate that she ambled about unrelated activities and chose the experiences and words of others when she could write much more interestingly about her own walks. As an avid walker, I was disappointed with her book.
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Title: River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit ISBN: 0670031763 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 27 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art by Rebecca Solnit ISBN: 0820324930 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Walking by Henry David Thoreau ISBN: 0062511130 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 18 June, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West by Rebecca Solnit ISBN: 0520220668 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: CITY LIFE by Witold Rybczynski ISBN: 0684825295 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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