Whether she is contemplating the history of walking as a cultural and political experience over the past two hundred years (Wanderlust), or using the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge as a lens to discuss the transformations of space and time in late nineteenth-century America (River of Shadows), Rebecca Solnit has emerged as an inventive and original writer whose mind is daring in the connections it makes. A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit’s own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I don’t know. I really wanted to like this one but I had a really hard time getting into it. I read it for Life’s Library Book Club. I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from reading it or at least giving it a try, but it wasn’t the book for me.
In the book, there are definitely great stories to be told but I couldn’t get into the author’s thoughts. I needed more that I could relate to I suppose and this one centered on the author’s very personal form of contemplation. It presented a lot of overthinking and navel-gazing type content, being more about perception and a lot of personal reflection. Other people may enjoy that. For me, I just didn’t enjoy it as much.
I would like to try reading another book by Rebecca Solnit.
