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A review by redheadreading
The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert Macfarlane
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
Reading the first few chapters I thought this was going to be a new favourite because I loved the meditations on walking, on how landscapes change us just as much as we change them, on linguistics and poetry and more.
Unfortunately, whilst some chapters were super strong others really weren't. I'm not overly interested in the poet he loves so the biographical elements there were a bit dull. Didn't care at all for the chapter focused on the guy who bought a human skeleton for art purposes (explicitly through deceit!) and kills and eats loads of birds (?). Some of the travelling abroad chapters veer a bit into viewing landscapes as quite barbaric in a way that carries some real implications.
I was really moved reading the chapter on Ramallah, thinking about how even those discussions of walking as a dangerous and lost act will have only gotten worse by now. There is a moment in that chapter that feels incredibly disrespectful, when an older Palestinian woman is telling him about writing to President Reagan, he says "I stopped listening" and then goes on a waffley thought anecdote about the etymology of a word. Rude!!
Unfortunately, whilst some chapters were super strong others really weren't. I'm not overly interested in the poet he loves so the biographical elements there were a bit dull. Didn't care at all for the chapter focused on the guy who bought a human skeleton for art purposes (explicitly through deceit!) and kills and eats loads of birds (?). Some of the travelling abroad chapters veer a bit into viewing landscapes as quite barbaric in a way that carries some real implications.
I was really moved reading the chapter on Ramallah, thinking about how even those discussions of walking as a dangerous and lost act will have only gotten worse by now. There is a moment in that chapter that feels incredibly disrespectful, when an older Palestinian woman is telling him about writing to President Reagan, he says "I stopped listening" and then goes on a waffley thought anecdote about the etymology of a word. Rude!!