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223 reviews for:
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London
Lauren Elkin
3.54 AVERAGE
223 reviews for:
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London
Lauren Elkin
3.54 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Being somewhat of a Flâneuse myself, I was looking forward to jumping into this one. It turns out that I had a mixed experience. On one hand, some of the historic information was surprisingly enjoyable. On the other, some of it was long-winded and seemingly irrelevant. Some sections really conveyed the author's experience, while others seemed to be holding back considerably. Overall, I would say that it starts off strong and generally goes downhill. However, there were enough nuggets of information and inspiration, throughout, to make me glad I read the whole thing.
I found it an interesting topic, but a bit disorganized. There were too many chronological jumps, back and forth, which were confusing.
I picked this book up in a bookstore in York (England) when I was just wandering around taking photos and stopping for coffee to write, so of course this seemed like a good book to pick up.
The book weaves together a chosen city with a famous and artistic woman who either lived in the city or spent time there and walked the streets of the city and how it connects to the author and her time in the same city and how it helped their creativity or hindered it and how they worked around it.
I liked that I learned some things about creative and artistic women I either only knew a little bit about (Martha Gellhorn) or people I knew very little about (Calle). The author goes deep into that part, or parts, of their lives on how they moved through their environment or changed environments to meet their needs, to support their art, and live life. I found this quite intriguing. She weaves together a compelling story about the women she features in the book and I left each chapter feeling like I knew these women quite well. The author is a good story teller.
I also like that the book was heavy on Paris since it is the city that I have been to the most (outside of NYC) and that the chapters on Paris are split between different areas of topic and different women flaneuse. The women that each of the three discussions on Paris focus on are women worth reading about and studying: Jean Rhys, George Sand, and Agnes Varda. I knew some about all three, but as mentioned above, I left each chapter with a sense of knowing them better and wanting to know more. It felt intimate in the details. If Paris is not your thing or is somewhere you despise, then this book may rub you the wrong way since the author clearly loves Paris and chooses to live there.
I'm a fan of books where the author inserts themselves into other artists lives either through history lessons or through personal interactions with the artist and/or their art and through a filter that matters to them (flaneusing in this case). I like reading a perspective that may or may not be my own or may or may not be art that interests me or that I know about. It is a curiosity factor and this book fit that bill. The memoir portion of the book was not intrusive and I found it to be some of the places where I didn't want to put the book down, for example, the chapter on Tokyo.
This is not a travel book or a book about pragmatic ways to maneuver through the cities in the book as a woman. It is a book about how some women artists used walking a city as part of their art or as a way to get creative juices flowing or unblock creativity and about their lives in those cities while intertwining as a memoir of sorts.
I enjoyed this books and the writing.
The book weaves together a chosen city with a famous and artistic woman who either lived in the city or spent time there and walked the streets of the city and how it connects to the author and her time in the same city and how it helped their creativity or hindered it and how they worked around it.
I liked that I learned some things about creative and artistic women I either only knew a little bit about (Martha Gellhorn) or people I knew very little about (Calle). The author goes deep into that part, or parts, of their lives on how they moved through their environment or changed environments to meet their needs, to support their art, and live life. I found this quite intriguing. She weaves together a compelling story about the women she features in the book and I left each chapter feeling like I knew these women quite well. The author is a good story teller.
I also like that the book was heavy on Paris since it is the city that I have been to the most (outside of NYC) and that the chapters on Paris are split between different areas of topic and different women flaneuse. The women that each of the three discussions on Paris focus on are women worth reading about and studying: Jean Rhys, George Sand, and Agnes Varda. I knew some about all three, but as mentioned above, I left each chapter with a sense of knowing them better and wanting to know more. It felt intimate in the details. If Paris is not your thing or is somewhere you despise, then this book may rub you the wrong way since the author clearly loves Paris and chooses to live there.
I'm a fan of books where the author inserts themselves into other artists lives either through history lessons or through personal interactions with the artist and/or their art and through a filter that matters to them (flaneusing in this case). I like reading a perspective that may or may not be my own or may or may not be art that interests me or that I know about. It is a curiosity factor and this book fit that bill. The memoir portion of the book was not intrusive and I found it to be some of the places where I didn't want to put the book down, for example, the chapter on Tokyo.
This is not a travel book or a book about pragmatic ways to maneuver through the cities in the book as a woman. It is a book about how some women artists used walking a city as part of their art or as a way to get creative juices flowing or unblock creativity and about their lives in those cities while intertwining as a memoir of sorts.
I enjoyed this books and the writing.
Eh. I loved the premise and some of the chapters. But I was less interested in the author's situation --
I wanted much more about other women writer-walkers throughout history.
I wanted much more about other women writer-walkers throughout history.
this is a gorgeously smart memoir more than any sort of critical theory but that’s what girls want
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Part travel writing, part memoir, part essay on the history of the flaneuse. I read part of this in Paris and thoroughly enjoyed learning more about French culture through the eyes of the author while exploring on the ground myself. Right book at the right time for me.
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Ms Elkins intertwines her personal experiences living in the cities of London, Paris, Tokyo, Venice, New York with the experiences of Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys and others. Excellent read.