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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
Still as wonderful as the first time I read it more than 30 years ago. 18-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor sleeps in barns, Salvation Army hostels and castles as he walks from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople and meets just as great a variety of people. A vivid, erudite and charming book which opens a window on the vanished world of central Europe in the 1930s.
A charming romp across a now vanished Europe. I had slightly higher expectations for the prose (given how highly one of my favourite prose writers, Robert Macfarlane, recommended it), and found that his wandering verbal excursions went on a little too long at times. (To be honest, my favourite part of the book was the prologue where he describes his eccentric childhood—I want a full memoir of those years!) But this was still very enjoyable and I plan to finish the trilogy.
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I love this book. The trilogy chronicles the adventures of the author walking from England to Istanbul starting in 1934. This represents his travels up to Hungary. It’s a time capsule of a Europe trying to understand the consequences of the Great War and weary of the rumblings in Germany. There’s not really a narrative, which is kind of the point. It’s more of a suite of adolescent impressions of humanity as filtered through the author looking back at them, someone who has been through the worst humanity has to offer, but only after the events described. The memories are limned with a kind of gauzy joy, an innocence he’s trying to recover, and the writing feels like a byproduct of that process. Which is to say the writing is some of the best travel writing in English, if not the best. I read this book at night, right before falling to sleep. Every night it sent me into a beautiful reverie of snowy paths, hearth-warmed inns, and an invigorated faith in strangers.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Patrick Leigh Fermor sets off from Holland to Constantinople in foot in 1933 at the age of 18. He makes friends with everyone from peasants to aristocrats, and everyone seems to like him. He impresses us with his learning, he knows a great deal of classical literature and Shakespeare by heart. He relates some funny anecdotes of reciting passages out loud as he walks alone (or so he thinks). He has one encounter with a woman who runs away from him, thinking him mad.
The first volume leaves us on the border of Hungary, where the languages are strange to our protagonist, and the world seems wilder and less familiar to the Anglo experience. I can't wait to pick up the next volume.
The first volume leaves us on the border of Hungary, where the languages are strange to our protagonist, and the world seems wilder and less familiar to the Anglo experience. I can't wait to pick up the next volume.
I hate to give this 2 stars because I didn’t hate it and there wasn’t really anything wrong with it. I just didn’t really like it.
The premise was very promising and some passages and sections were interesting, but it was generally a slog. I was never excited to pick it back up and ended up spending far more time on it than it was worth. The writing was often beautiful and the author’s adventures adventures, but it could never quite evade being boring.
I’ve only given 2 books 2 stars. That’s mainly because I don’t bother to finish most 2 star books. I did finish this one, so I’ll give it that. Still, I think that was mostly because I spent $20 on it and have lugged it around on my back for the last 6 months.
It’s not bad but I would only recommended it to a very specific type of person which I am not.
2.8
The premise was very promising and some passages and sections were interesting, but it was generally a slog. I was never excited to pick it back up and ended up spending far more time on it than it was worth. The writing was often beautiful and the author’s adventures adventures, but it could never quite evade being boring.
I’ve only given 2 books 2 stars. That’s mainly because I don’t bother to finish most 2 star books. I did finish this one, so I’ll give it that. Still, I think that was mostly because I spent $20 on it and have lugged it around on my back for the last 6 months.
It’s not bad but I would only recommended it to a very specific type of person which I am not.
2.8
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
The story this book tells is an inspiration: it is not simply a triumph of discursive and descriptive English prose, but the triumph of a character who having been thrown out of school set off in winter aged 18 to walk alone across foreign lands, in the event for several years, picking up the necessary languages on his way.
Fermor builds rapport effortlessly with everyone he meets and through his new friends explores and learns to understand the peoples and places he travels among.
Fermor was little more than a schoolboy when he began his journey. He published his account of it forty years later. A remarkable man.
Fermor builds rapport effortlessly with everyone he meets and through his new friends explores and learns to understand the peoples and places he travels among.
Fermor was little more than a schoolboy when he began his journey. He published his account of it forty years later. A remarkable man.
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Traveling through Nazi Germany and on to Eastern Europe while at times visiting with Jewish folks some of whom were aristocrats of great charm and physical beauty and yet giving little attention to their persecution and the imminent mass murder of European Jewry was strange as he wrote in 1977 looking back at 1933. The only flaw in this wonderful and moving travelogue. Ok, I also just wished there had been less or shorter descriptions of the landscape, weather, fauna, architecture. Otherwise it’s highly erudite and poetic. You’ll definitely be expanding your vocabulary–so keep a dictionary handy–and your knowledge of Central European medieval history.