130 reviews for:

The Songlines

Bruce Chatwin

3.74 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging hopeful reflective medium-paced

A memoir that is true with a few changes of people and the occasional circumstance. A very interesting book about the songs of the ancestors in Australia - the songs the ancestors sang as they walked across the land and created it, singing the creation as they went. 
adventurous reflective slow-paced
adventurous informative inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced
slow-paced

Salvaged by the cover

Letto a cavallo di un viaggio in Australia, un libro che mi ha offerto numerosi spunti di riflessione. Più che un romanzo è una sorta di diario di viaggio. Il concetto di via dei canti è qualcosa che non ci appartiene ma terribilmente affascinante. Lascia un po' di amaro in bocca pensare che molta parte della cultura aborigena sia stata soffocata e dimenticata...

Simply brilliant.
challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

Coming out of lockdown, I've been thinking a lot about wandering, and I first picked up this book for the somewhat random collection of notes on roving in the middle. I enjoyed those, and the bizarre interspersed stories they were interlaced with drew me into the rest of the book. While I enjoyed the notes, they do make the book feel more cobbled together than seamless.

Chatwin's narrative reads like someone trying to discover another culture's way of viewing the world, and in this he succeeds. I don't mean that he becomes fluent in Aboriginal thought, but rather that he broadens his own--and our--understanding of another way of viewing the world. To this end, I'm not bothered that the story blurs fiction and non-fiction, as I would have been happy with a story solidly in either camp.

If the urge to travel is calling to you, and you want to take a vicarious trip into the Outback with an interesting author who has given a lot of thought to his own desire to roam--flavored with colorful characters and something of Aboriginal culture--I think this book will be satisfying. If you're looking for a deep and thorough review of the Aboriginal culture, this isn't the book you're looking for.
informative medium-paced

I put it down somewhere and lost it :(