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cdbellomy's review
4.0
Beautiful descriptive writing. Interesting essays about the natural world, many in far-off places.
kingjason's review
5.0
Wonderful writing, never have I been as jealous of an author as I am right now, the things Kathleen Jamie has done and the places she has been as part of the research for this book is stunning. Visiting remote abandoned islands in the Hebrides, St Kilda and Rona, to sitting inside a whale skeleton in a museum giving it a clean, that must have been an amazing experience. It wasn't all fun and games though, at times she suffers big time with seasickness that she must be wondering why she is putting herself through this, then she reaches her destination and it all suddenly makes sense. In this book she talks about her past, working on an archaeological site, you can see that's where her love of the outside started.
Beautifully written, she can make the mundane stand out so that you can become engrossed in it, really looking forward to what she gets up to in her next book.
Book review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/sightlines-by-kathleen-jamie/
Beautifully written, she can make the mundane stand out so that you can become engrossed in it, really looking forward to what she gets up to in her next book.
Book review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/sightlines-by-kathleen-jamie/
serendipitysbooks's review
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Sightlines is a gorgeous essay collection focussing on wild places and the nature to be found there. There are petrels and gannets (I’m a bird lover so these were among my favourites), magpie moths and killer whales, wind, the Northern Lights and prehistoric caves and much more. These essays are not just descriptions of places and the things to be found there. Overarching everything are thoughtful mediations on the relationships between nature and the human condition and what it all means. The writing managed to be very matter of fact (no hyperbole or overt sentimentality here) while still reflecting awe. Often a particular phrase would stop me in my reading tracks so I wasn’t surprised to learn the author is also a poet. The fact that she has a degree in philosophy also comes as no surprise after reading this book. Jamie’s love of the wild, her need to escape into it, was clearly evident in the text and was something I could relate to - even if my wild places are a little less remote and more easily accessible than hers. This book was a delight to dip into and I enjoyed reading an essay or two each morning.
victoriaknow's review
5.0
This was gorgeous. I normally don't read essays. I don't read travel writing and I don't read books about nature. I ended up reading this because of the recommendation from a fellow book-lover (whose opinion I trust), and i'm so glad I did. Aside from discovering that these highly neglected genres may have something to offer me after all, I also experienced things that i might never have even thought were possible to experience.
Through this book I sailed up a fjord in Greenland and smelled the floating stillness of icebergs, I peered through a microscope at a human intestine and I stood inside a whale's skeleton and imagined how huge the animal might once have been. I don't normally enjoy a lot of description but her writing is honestly so wonderfully evocative and simultaneously relatable that it's more like listening to a close friend tell you a long story about an experience they once had. There are all sorts of personal details that Ms Jamie shares that immediately spark sympathy in us as readers, keeping us hanging on, travelling her journeys right along with her.
It helps that she's done amazingly interesting things and experienced some bits of the world that very few people have, but I think that even had she simply gone on a boring tour of your own home town, she'd have been able to describe it in a way that caught your interest. She's a poet, but the sorcery in her use of language makes her work more accessible, not less. Now I want to read her other books. This book was obviously the cure for my "travel writing isn't my genre" misconception.
Through this book I sailed up a fjord in Greenland and smelled the floating stillness of icebergs, I peered through a microscope at a human intestine and I stood inside a whale's skeleton and imagined how huge the animal might once have been. I don't normally enjoy a lot of description but her writing is honestly so wonderfully evocative and simultaneously relatable that it's more like listening to a close friend tell you a long story about an experience they once had. There are all sorts of personal details that Ms Jamie shares that immediately spark sympathy in us as readers, keeping us hanging on, travelling her journeys right along with her.
It helps that she's done amazingly interesting things and experienced some bits of the world that very few people have, but I think that even had she simply gone on a boring tour of your own home town, she'd have been able to describe it in a way that caught your interest. She's a poet, but the sorcery in her use of language makes her work more accessible, not less. Now I want to read her other books. This book was obviously the cure for my "travel writing isn't my genre" misconception.
justabean_reads's review
5.0
Absolutely gorgeous writing and insights. I can't think of much to say about this beyond expressing how much I appreciated the author's connection with both the natural world and our relationship with it. So many nature books get really floaty and on about the perfection of the natural world, and her descriptions of a pod of killer whales, or an ice burg are nothing short of astonishing, but the book is always about how humans and the land and the animals interact and connect, what place we have with each other. Sometimes brutal, sometimes stunning, always interesting.
lnatal's review
3.0
From BBC Radio 4:
In the opening essay from her new book SIGHTLINES, the Scottish poet and travel writer Jamie takes us to a world of ice and aurora and silence.
In the opening essay from her new book SIGHTLINES, the Scottish poet and travel writer Jamie takes us to a world of ice and aurora and silence.
harryr's review
4.0
This is a terrific book of essays. I’d broadly categorise them as nature writing, or at least writing about the human place in the natural world; whales and remote Scottish islands are recurrent themes, but a pathology lab, a lunar eclipse and some cave paintings also make an appearance.
Kathleen Jamie is a poet, and I guess I’d call these poetic essays rather than, um, didactic ones (there are probably better terms, but…). The longer essays do explicitly explore ideas, but more of the book is spent on places, events, and personal reactions, all of which she does brilliantly. It is beautiful, subtle writing.
Kathleen Jamie is a poet, and I guess I’d call these poetic essays rather than, um, didactic ones (there are probably better terms, but…). The longer essays do explicitly explore ideas, but more of the book is spent on places, events, and personal reactions, all of which she does brilliantly. It is beautiful, subtle writing.
halfmanhalfbook's review
5.0
As with all books that are written by poets, this is a delight to read. The language is eloquent and lyrical, without being pretentious.
She takes us, through a series of essays, on a journey to places in the far north of the UK and Scandinavia. To islands and museums and more importantly to the part of the mind that communicates with nature.
Well worth reading. Shall be reading some of her other books