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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
slow-paced
I feel like I could have really enjoyed this, but it didn't reallt click for me until quite late on, by which point I'd lost some of the threads.
adventurous
funny
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Chatwin was one of my favorite travel writers when I was younger, so I went back and read his first book. It's a tale of esoteric European attraction to obscure places, and the mysticism associated with Patagonia including Yetis, bandits, unicorns and whatever else strikes the imagination. The writing is also laugh out loud funny.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
combed through the reviews a bit and was stunned by the extremely negative ones. the criticism wrt racism and colonialism is more than legitimate and i second it, but i wont stand for critiques on the writing and structure of this book. stunning prose, vivid and bleak at the same time, meandering in the way travelling can be (in that way the capital T Travel book), just a stunning stunning read
Interesting form and style, but the cold observations of an outsider start to wear on you. He gives you these details that are supposed to be desolate and beautiful and kind of sad, but man it wears on you. Also, it's hard to ignore how much he ignores the local and indigenous Patagonians, in favor of talking about recent Welsh, English, and American immigrants. And when he does turn his attention to the natives it's always with a derisive lens. There were some intriguing anecdotes, but in the end it didn't have much to do with Patagonia.