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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Total strangers treating you like long lost family and taking you in for a night; attending a family birthday party & not being able to say no; humour & confusion and misunderstanding of word meanings; baklava as bulking up; sharing a goat head on a long train trip; and lovely photographs. So much besides biking in this memoir. The rest of my review is on:
http://booksandbrands.blogspot.com/2018/07/lands-of-lost-borders.html
http://booksandbrands.blogspot.com/2018/07/lands-of-lost-borders.html
I enjoyed the events of this book as a vicarious travel experience.
But even more so, I enjoyed Harris' prose style and her gen x/early millennial questioning of the purpose of travel and exploration, critical analysis of environmentalism, her hard look at the politics and economics of the far east.
But even more so, I enjoyed Harris' prose style and her gen x/early millennial questioning of the purpose of travel and exploration, critical analysis of environmentalism, her hard look at the politics and economics of the far east.
adventurous
slow-paced
Woah. This was amazing. Kate's intrinsic need for adventure and wildness to match her own spoke to every part of me.
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I've been struggling with what to say about this book for days. Can Harris turn phrases that make me wish I'd thought of them first? Certainly. Lines like "I don't just appreciate huge, head-clearing horizons; I need them like a crutch, the sort of hard contours I can grab onto and heave myself up with to behold the vastness out of which we came and to which we all return" feel like something I'd have jotted down on my bike journeys. Harris can clearly write, when she isn't getting in her own way, that is.
There's a difference between gathering experiences and gaining perspective, and unfortunately, Harris all too often seems to be compiling the former without adding the latter. Nor did her editors do her any favors; it regularly seems clear that no one from any of the countries through which she rode had any input regarding how their countries and cultures were portrayed.
As a result, Harris herself comes off as rather unlikable and unfortunately overprivileged while also being incredibly underwhelming when it comes to showing perspective or wisdom. In her defense, she's young...but no one, no matter their age, should get a pass from editors.
Also? The narrative form here didn't help her. As a series of essays, this might have worked a little better, as the essay form could have helped shape and tighten the places where her privilege and lacking perspective detract. As a straight narrative, though? This didn't work for me.
[1.5 stars for the moments where Harris got out of her own way and let the experiences speak for themselves, rather than ruin them with her judgment and snobbery.]
There's a difference between gathering experiences and gaining perspective, and unfortunately, Harris all too often seems to be compiling the former without adding the latter. Nor did her editors do her any favors; it regularly seems clear that no one from any of the countries through which she rode had any input regarding how their countries and cultures were portrayed.
As a result, Harris herself comes off as rather unlikable and unfortunately overprivileged while also being incredibly underwhelming when it comes to showing perspective or wisdom. In her defense, she's young...but no one, no matter their age, should get a pass from editors.
Also? The narrative form here didn't help her. As a series of essays, this might have worked a little better, as the essay form could have helped shape and tighten the places where her privilege and lacking perspective detract. As a straight narrative, though? This didn't work for me.
[1.5 stars for the moments where Harris got out of her own way and let the experiences speak for themselves, rather than ruin them with her judgment and snobbery.]
I was really wavering between three and four stars--this book was great fun in parts, somewhat annoying in others, and occasionally insightful. Before I go into any of this, I will say that my main takeaway is the silliness of reading travel memoirs during a pandemic. Much of Harris's adventure along the Silk Road sounded cold and difficult and a little unpleasant, and it still made me totally jealous.
Harris's adventurous spirit really buoys the book. Her enthusiasm for exploring the world is infectious, and I admire her willingness to throw herself into the unknown and find joy and wonder in the uncomfortable. She also writes powerfully about how arbitrary and harmful man-made borders often are. Her bike trip, for all its chilliness and logistical hurdles, sounds like a blast.
The book is full of musings on travel and exploration and borders and the meaning of life and whatnot, and some of them are lovely, but I found many of them kind of annoying and/or incomplete. Harris is a huge fan of the rhetorical-question-as-segue-into-something-totally-different, which in parts gave the book the feel of a drunken late-night college conversation that feels deep in the moment but kind of nonsensical the next morning. The effect is a lot of perfectly interesting thoughts introduced and then left hanging. I might just have a personal vendetta against this style. I also might be giving Harris less credit than she deserves out of a sense of competition that I will never ever win because she's a million times cooler than I am.
Anyway, this was a fun read but I had higher hopes for it.
Harris's adventurous spirit really buoys the book. Her enthusiasm for exploring the world is infectious, and I admire her willingness to throw herself into the unknown and find joy and wonder in the uncomfortable. She also writes powerfully about how arbitrary and harmful man-made borders often are. Her bike trip, for all its chilliness and logistical hurdles, sounds like a blast.
The book is full of musings on travel and exploration and borders and the meaning of life and whatnot, and some of them are lovely, but I found many of them kind of annoying and/or incomplete. Harris is a huge fan of the rhetorical-question-as-segue-into-something-totally-different, which in parts gave the book the feel of a drunken late-night college conversation that feels deep in the moment but kind of nonsensical the next morning. The effect is a lot of perfectly interesting thoughts introduced and then left hanging. I might just have a personal vendetta against this style. I also might be giving Harris less credit than she deserves out of a sense of competition that I will never ever win because she's a million times cooler than I am.
Anyway, this was a fun read but I had higher hopes for it.
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced