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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
This isn't a travelogue; it's a chance for lovers of Woolf, Dickens, Trollope, PD James and more to share the normally solitary joys of reading.
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
A gentle book on reading, on geocritical musings, on authors, and the way that cities linger in literary consciousness. This is as much a love letter to London as to the books that dwell within it.
Admittedly I read this on an aeroplane, and my brain soft and dopey, my memories of it are a little cloudy. Having said that, it is an excellent book to read on an aeroplane. Not too demanding, something to agree with, familiar and meandering. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to others - particularly those fascinated with the act of reading or rereading itself. Quindlen makes insightful comments on the nature of literature, and particularly of London's enduring appeal as capital of the literary world. Wrapping history into anecdote, memoir into book review, Imagined London is a joyful thing to read.
It is important to stress that this does not come across as deeply intellectual. Perhaps academic texts have made me cynical but I must admit I found many pages sickly and thin. It often came across as very (and I mean this politely) *American*. An anglophile american who thinks Britain is exclusively tweeds, queens, and "sc-own-s". Sometimes this was sweet and written with no small amount of self-awareness, but other times it came across as patronising.. British people in this book are a single monoculture. Quindlen presents British literary taste as a fact and the texts as if all drawn from the same unvarying inspiration. I particularly felt bored (a touch excluded) by her numerous claims about 'the English', observations on how 'the English' behave, or what 'the English' think. This generalisation is a lazy destructive habit which collapses the broad diversity of Britain's peoples, languages, accents, dialects, oral histories, folklores, habits, religions etc. etc. into a single american sitcom cliche. It also contrasts painfully from one of the greatest themes of the book; the way London's "soul" has has always lain in its organic diversity, noise, mesh of cultures and class.
Another niggle I had was the way historical claims were made with abandon (though not always correctly), and there were many many sweeping generalisations on the nature of reading/on literary criticism. In particular, scholarly debate on books are trivialised and often one interpretation is presented as *the* way to read. Which is fine if we remember it is a personal work and not scholarship, even if it sometimes pretends to be.
Part memoir, effusion, and critical opinion this book is best enjoyed on a hot summer's day.
Admittedly I read this on an aeroplane, and my brain soft and dopey, my memories of it are a little cloudy. Having said that, it is an excellent book to read on an aeroplane. Not too demanding, something to agree with, familiar and meandering. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to others - particularly those fascinated with the act of reading or rereading itself. Quindlen makes insightful comments on the nature of literature, and particularly of London's enduring appeal as capital of the literary world. Wrapping history into anecdote, memoir into book review, Imagined London is a joyful thing to read.
It is important to stress that this does not come across as deeply intellectual. Perhaps academic texts have made me cynical but I must admit I found many pages sickly and thin. It often came across as very (and I mean this politely) *American*. An anglophile american who thinks Britain is exclusively tweeds, queens, and "sc-own-s". Sometimes this was sweet and written with no small amount of self-awareness, but other times it came across as patronising.. British people in this book are a single monoculture. Quindlen presents British literary taste as a fact and the texts as if all drawn from the same unvarying inspiration. I particularly felt bored (a touch excluded) by her numerous claims about 'the English', observations on how 'the English' behave, or what 'the English' think. This generalisation is a lazy destructive habit which collapses the broad diversity of Britain's peoples, languages, accents, dialects, oral histories, folklores, habits, religions etc. etc. into a single american sitcom cliche. It also contrasts painfully from one of the greatest themes of the book; the way London's "soul" has has always lain in its organic diversity, noise, mesh of cultures and class.
Another niggle I had was the way historical claims were made with abandon (though not always correctly), and there were many many sweeping generalisations on the nature of reading/on literary criticism. In particular, scholarly debate on books are trivialised and often one interpretation is presented as *the* way to read. Which is fine if we remember it is a personal work and not scholarship, even if it sometimes pretends to be.
Part memoir, effusion, and critical opinion this book is best enjoyed on a hot summer's day.
I had such high hopes for this book, but it sorta fell short of the mark. Enjoyable bed-time reading, but not overly imaginative or entertaining. Too bad, it's a great premise.
* 2,5
“Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life.
And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.”
So I thought, since I probably won’t be able to actually go to London, because of Corona, I can still read about it, right.
I really liked the concept of this book, wanted to like the book so badly.
Maybe you could say it’s because of the translation that I didn´t like it, but it wasn’t the language that was the problem (it was good, I could tell even through the translation). No, my problem lay with the subject the author chose.
In my opinion, when I want to read a book about London, I don't have to know all these details about your personal life. And even though I liked the time spend with authors I knew or places I had been too, but they were very short. The author had a weird way of choosing which books to discuss, sometimes just mentioning a little of a book, other times spending multiple paragraphs on them. And when I haven´t ever heard of the thing you´re discussing for paragraphs, I get bored. The book felt rambly because there wasn´t a clear structure and tried to hard to be literary.
“Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life.
And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.”
So I thought, since I probably won’t be able to actually go to London, because of Corona, I can still read about it, right.
I really liked the concept of this book, wanted to like the book so badly.
Maybe you could say it’s because of the translation that I didn´t like it, but it wasn’t the language that was the problem (it was good, I could tell even through the translation). No, my problem lay with the subject the author chose.
In my opinion, when I want to read a book about London, I don't have to know all these details about your personal life. And even though I liked the time spend with authors I knew or places I had been too, but they were very short. The author had a weird way of choosing which books to discuss, sometimes just mentioning a little of a book, other times spending multiple paragraphs on them. And when I haven´t ever heard of the thing you´re discussing for paragraphs, I get bored. The book felt rambly because there wasn´t a clear structure and tried to hard to be literary.
I'm afraid this didn't quite live up to my expectations, which admittedly were high. There were some interesting historical bits in it, but it didn't feel like the "tour" promised in the title - more like a travel memoir, which wasn't quite what I was looking for.
Mildly interesting, though not really my cup of tea, as the British might say. I read Imagined London on my last trip to London, hoping for something of a memoir or personal experience that would grab me and cause me to think differently about the city as I wandered its parks and byways. It was the former, but didn't do much of the latter for me.
Very quick read. Covered the locations of well known authors and books, such as Dickens and Virginia Woolfe
The writer is clearly an Anglophile and a serious book nerd, like me, but there was something about this little book that did not work, even though I identified with her enthusiasm and joy at being in London for the first time. I think what spoiled it for me was the generalizations about the British, which I found to be usually totally wrong, from my experience. For example, she complains about the fact that she stood for ages looking lost at some spot, and no one would come to her help in London, whereas she claims that in New York, people would jump up to help her. My experience is the complete opposite, and sometime in the 80s, I had a Lord in a top hat and Savile Row three-piece suit stop their limo next to me in London to help me out when I was browsing my map. In New York, which she claims is warm but I felt was cold and business-like through and through, no one would look at my direction. Whenever I visited England I found the English to be very warm and friendly, nothing like the stereotypes about them. And this is part of the reason that I cannot enjoy reading such stereotypes in travel books. Some are and some aren't, in every people on this earth. There may have been a few other problems with this book, but this is what bothered me the most.
I love London. Everything about it. I'd move there in a heartbeat if I could. This was a beautifully written book that gave a picture perfect description of Quindlen's visits to the grand city. It's so detailed that you can imagine walking around with her and (if you've been there) you can close your eyes and picture everything she's seeing. This was a little mini vacation in 160 pages.
This book will definitely surprise you. In spite of its small size (only 160 pages), it's not a book you can read quickly. The book is both a literal and literary travel guide of London, yet it felt like I was reading a private diary. It's almost sinful to rush through someone's private thoughts. Sometimes though, I felt like the thoughts were so personal (or so intellectual) that the author just lost me. Overall, however, I enjoyed it, if anything just because Anna Quindlen writes so beautifully that I just eat up her words.