Whether she is contemplating the history of walking as a cultural and political experience over the past two hundred years (Wanderlust), or ...
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Jun 14, 2007
Lara
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She does rambling right; lots of great quotes and ancedotes.
For instance, this one by Virginia Woolf from "To the Lighthouse":
"For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of-to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core More...
For instance, this one by Virginia Woolf from "To the Lighthouse":
"For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of-to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core More...
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Apr 13, 2008
ValerieLyn
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I am obsessed with reading about nomadism. About place, the the experience we have as we move through it, about topography, how it reveals us while simultaneously revealing itself, about wandering, how our thoughts work when we move. Solnit is a fantastic author in this vein.
Remember those rambling conversations that you had late late late into the night at some coffee shop when you were not yet twenty something, or maybe you were just, when you were discovering (inventing!?) philoso More...
Remember those rambling conversations that you had late late late into the night at some coffee shop when you were not yet twenty something, or maybe you were just, when you were discovering (inventing!?) philoso More...
Jan 06, 2008
al•veiz
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This book is written like a love letter which, in this case, is an insult to it's topic.
I found many of the anecdotes and references too personal making parts seem more like an autobiography (or collection of excuses) than a cultural document on the idea of being lost. The writing is also full of misplaced lyrical indulgences that detract from the somewhat sporadic historical references that seemed otherwise well researched and interesting. Maybe Solnit couldn't come up with enough mater More...
I found many of the anecdotes and references too personal making parts seem more like an autobiography (or collection of excuses) than a cultural document on the idea of being lost. The writing is also full of misplaced lyrical indulgences that detract from the somewhat sporadic historical references that seemed otherwise well researched and interesting. Maybe Solnit couldn't come up with enough mater More...
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Jan 19, 2012
Laura
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This sure wasn't what I expected, based on the title. I thought the book would be full of big thinks and big wanders, all based on the idea of getting lost--in terms of actual space and place, like in the wilderness or an unfamiliar city, whether by accident or with purpose--and moving through the world in a literal sense.
Instead, Solnit touches on the many many meanings of getting lost--emotional, psychic, physical, misplaced items, lost species, death, love--by interweaving a seemin More...
Instead, Solnit touches on the many many meanings of getting lost--emotional, psychic, physical, misplaced items, lost species, death, love--by interweaving a seemin More...
Sep 20, 2011
Nicole
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Rebecca Solnit’s writing is wild, wandering, wondering, free, luminous and full of the bittersweet ache of nostalgia. Her descriptions and stories in this book are fragile, intricate, and determined.
She talks about the feeling of being lost and says:
Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing….
While reading this work I found myself lost in her words and in the feelings More...
She talks about the feeling of being lost and says:
Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing….
While reading this work I found myself lost in her words and in the feelings More...
Jul 19, 2011
Ammie
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One of those "indefinable genre" books. The loose premise--that getting lost can be, in different times and places, a worthwhile experience, a way to expand knowledge, and a frame of mind--seems more like a loose framework for Solnit to hang a number of experiences and educational wanderings on, but that's okay with me. The book alternates between chapters that are more or less biographical (albeit with a philosophically wandering bent to them) and chapters that relate to distance an
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Jun 06, 2007
Leah
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A lovely non-fiction work centered on the idea that in order to find yourself, you first must lose youself. Rebecca Solit writes cleanly and elgantly, and always returns to her central theme. It was, however, unclear whether this book was to be taken as one piece or as a collection of essays. I think the author was striving for the former, but aside from the thematic consistancy there isn't a strong through-line in the book as a whole after the first three chapters/sections.
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Jul 11, 2011
Solnit's most recent book about SF, Infinite City, is so outrageously delightful that I thought I needed to check out some earlier work. This is a meditation on the concept of being lost that is often thought-provoking but even more often precious and insular. She seems to have a confidence in the inherent interest of her musings that I can't help admiring, but the fact is that I need more confidence in her to follow her transitionless jumps from one subject to another and back, interwoven with
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Jan 11, 2012
Bonnie
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"The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration--how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the elf into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?" Part memoir, part contemplation of nature, part geographical commentary, Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost is not for everyone. I'll admit I found her
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Oct 02, 2009
Mara
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I read a lot of this book while walking. I'd carry it with me while walking my son to school and take a really long route back home so I could read more of it because it is one of those books perfectly suited to reading and walking if you're into that kind of thing (and how grateful am I to live in a neighborhood where this doesn't especially raise eyebrows?) And walking I wouldn't get frustrated that it was a library book and I couldn't underline in it and instead got to carry it back to my jou
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Dec 13, 2008
Eleanor
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People keep recommending Rebecca Solnit to me and I'm so glad that I finally picked up one of her books! I'm totally charging through this and it's such a deft illustration of how to write well researched, engrossing personal non-fiction that is vaguely "stream of consciousness." She had a clear unifying idea, but leaves it, comes back to it, and brings everything together. She keeps writing about "the blue of distance" and I hoped that at some point she'd talk about how blue
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Jul 27, 2009
Jimmy
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For starters, thanks Jacob, you were right.
Solnit takes the historian's, as well as the environmentalist's approach to an analysis of loss, or what it means to be lost. Many of the essays here are personal explorations of mystery and human uncertainty, which eventually branch out into seemingly random connections that Mrs. Solnit has ostensibly pulled from research on many of her other books. Field Guide certainly does a fair share of wandering in itself, but the book's philosoph More...
Solnit takes the historian's, as well as the environmentalist's approach to an analysis of loss, or what it means to be lost. Many of the essays here are personal explorations of mystery and human uncertainty, which eventually branch out into seemingly random connections that Mrs. Solnit has ostensibly pulled from research on many of her other books. Field Guide certainly does a fair share of wandering in itself, but the book's philosoph More...
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Apr 06, 2010
Kasey
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Wow. I loved, loved, loved this book. It's unusual for me to experience a nonfiction book as un-put-downable, but that was exactly how I felt about A Field Guide to Getting Lost. As you might guess, these are meditations on lostness in its various guises, but they are so surprising, varied, beautiful and moving; Solnit's topics range from white settlers taken captive by Native Americans to the sudden death of a teenage friend to country music to the return of many native animals/birds to her
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Apr 13, 2011
Lee
rated it:
Wow.
I don't know really what to say. I saw Solnit speak last week, as a guest lecturer at the Kansas City Art Institute and really fell for her. She has a grace, and clarity of speech, and a mind like a diamond. A Field Guide to Getting Lost is part auto-biography, poetry, history, mysticism... Key points:
You have to lose yourself to find yourself...or the difference between getting lost and losing yourself...stories of place and landscape, mystery, love, deserts, abandoned hospitals More...
I don't know really what to say. I saw Solnit speak last week, as a guest lecturer at the Kansas City Art Institute and really fell for her. She has a grace, and clarity of speech, and a mind like a diamond. A Field Guide to Getting Lost is part auto-biography, poetry, history, mysticism... Key points:
You have to lose yourself to find yourself...or the difference between getting lost and losing yourself...stories of place and landscape, mystery, love, deserts, abandoned hospitals More...
Feb 26, 2011
Kim
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I bought this book to read while I traveled out to CA (my birth state) on a personal journey undertaken to pick up pieces where they could be picked up and to let go where I must. I started the book on the plane ride out and felt like I'd grabbed the guide to the trek to my homeland which I certainly didn't fully comprehend the reason behind. The writing was so beautiful and perfectly supported my solo journey to hook up with people and friends I hadn't seen in decades. I can't stop thinking
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Jan 03, 2011
Faith
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I really don't think there is anybody else that writes like Rebecca Solnit. I first read a long form essay of hers in Orion many years ago and then her Edward Muybridge book when it first came out. Since then I have been returning to her books and love both her western (U.S. west) sensibility, and her really insightful writing. Sometimes there are leaps in her thoughts that I am either unable to follow or just don't agree with and I haven't fully decided which it is yet, but regardless, her writ
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May 17, 2011
Jennifer
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A beautifully written book about the various ways to get lost that also gets lost with its narratives along the way. The themes that arise are philosophical takes on issues like our fear of getting lost vs. early pioneers feeling ok with getting lost as they tried to explore new lands; knowing that you don't know what's out there vs. pretending like you do; losing love; losing yourself in the desert; so many different variations on the theme. The book is experimental compared to what I was expe
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Aug 15, 2011
Leslie
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I picked this book up at a small bookstore and had no idea what it was about or the type of stories it held. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. All of these non-fiction stories, part historical, part memoir, are beautifully written. Solnit uses different methods to explain personal/emotional distance (from other people, from the world) and different ways people lose themselves (and their identities) to find themselves again. She explains the importance of this, along with some of the fatalitie
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Jan 25, 2010
Dea
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An incredible book of essays. The journey Solnit embarks on at the inception of each piece often leads to unexpected ends-- spiraling outward from a fact or moment to explore fragments connected only by her deft pen, then probing deeply in to the book's theme-- being lost. She explores loss from a myriad of different perspectives, from that of the wanderer to death to forgotten family history. The strongest essays are "Abandon," a grown-up punk rock ode to youth and decay and a piece o
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Apr 03, 2011
Jana
rated it:
This little book lived for months half-read and near neglected in my bedside table until I polished it off a couple of weeks ago. It's not that I wasn't enjoying it or finding it meaningful, but only that life was getting too busy for pleasure reading. That being said, the impetus for reading it in the first place was to feed ideas in my studio practice, which it did, and not so much for pure pleasure (though the two aren't mutually exclusive).
My ideas were particularly fed on the More...
My ideas were particularly fed on the More...
Jan 17, 2010
Nancy
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Exquisite writing meandering around the idea of "getting lost." The book was prompted by a question of pre-Socratic philosopher Meno, which a student gave her: "How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" Nine chapters, with every other chapter entitled "Blue of Distance," which includes some meandering around the color blue. Each chapter probably has some kernel of getting lost or finding one's way when lost but I couldn
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Dec 19, 2009
Cheryl
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I found a notebook with more quotes from this book just before or after I picked up Solnit's Storming the Gates of Heaven book. Coincidence? What an impression it made on me! I have pages and pages... “Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”
“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? (Plato) The things we want are More...
“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? (Plato) The things we want are More...
Oct 19, 2008
Jeremy
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Like her history of walking, Solnit provides a pleasing drift through a number of topics relating to being lost, getting lost, or dealing with loss. These are drifts are filtered through her own listless life and occasionally lead to some jewel-like insights like this one, which pops up in a discussion of Yves Klein's famous photograph Leap into the Void: "Movies are made out of darkness as well as light; it is the surprisingly brief intervals of darkness between each luminous still image
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Mar 17, 2008
Michele
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Rebecca's writing is exquisite. Reading this book is like biting the most divine peach at the height of summer ripeness perfection, a sensual delight which you want to savor in slow motion and let the juices dribble down your chin. I kept it by my bedside table and read it over a long period of time. Like a book of poetry, I felt I could just pick it up months later and it didn't really matter where because my chief enjoyment is her wordsmithy.
I know that doesn't do justice to her ke More...
I know that doesn't do justice to her ke More...
Mar 25, 2010
Ryan
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This book of nine sprawling essays meanders through what it means to be lost: physically, spiritually, emotionally, or figuratively. Although a few of the essays dragged a bit and occasionally crossed the line into tedium, others were tremendously good. In her writing, Rebecca Solnit has a unique ability to mix cerebral stoicism with openness and emotion, giving A Field Guide to Getting Lost a pleasant balance.
Mar 19, 2009
Marisa
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Rebecca Solnit is a beautiful writer - one of the best written nonfiction books I've ever read. Perhaps I am particularly attracted to books about roaming, getting lost and travel right now, but her book struck me as completely brilliant. She frames these acutely detailed, sensory rich descriptions of her own life and research around the concept of lost. I'd recommend this to any of my literary inclined friends.
Aug 01, 2009
Julene
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A poetic, deeply literary and philosophical thinker whose inspiration comes from the desert West, Solnit planted a forest of new ideas in my brain. I especially loved the essay "The Blue of Distance," which connects the places named in country and western ballads to the feeling we get when looking at blue desert horizons. Stunning and original ideas, all. I thank her and now want to read everything she's written.
Aug 17, 2010
Jess
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I picked up this book because the store description read, "it's a lot like having a long, drunken conversation with your smartest friend." i was drunk at the time... sold. in truth it's various ramblings held ever-so-precariously together. every time she was close to losing me there was some gem of an insight worth going on for. pretty random, but interesting.
Jan 27, 2009
Julia
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At times very stirring and beautiful, Rebecca Solint weaves history with personal revelations to create a mood and a story that leaves one feeling at once wistful and restless. Her prose, however, too often drifts towards the hackneyed ramblings of a diary entry, exacerbated by her proclivity for conjecture. Nevertheless, this book left me longing for home.
Mar 11, 2009
Venessa
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Finally, I had to give up on this one. Some of the observations were very interesting, but if Cherie thought she rambled in her other books (which I sort of thought she did but they were rambles with a point that always came back to their original thought) she would really think so with this one! I could see the point: it is about getting lost in the world through words, after all. I just couldn't stay focused on it, though.
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