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Jul 27, 2011

Ellen rated it:

I may have enjoyed this memoir by British author Geoff Dyer a bit more if, prior to picking it up, I had ever heard of Geoff Dyer--not to mention to have actually have read him. The picture he paints is not of a worldly intellectual traveling off the beaten path and living the moment, but of a rather immature, self-aggrandizing would-be thinker behaving like a teenager while actually in his 40s. His tales of drug-taking and drinking to excess did little to endear him to me, and the "screa More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2009

Jim rated it:

The only serious flaw in this otherwise extraordinary book is its title, which, in an attempt to seem playfully ironic, may mislead readers who would otherwise be glad to find it. It is decidedly not a talk-show-Dr. Phil-co-dependent no more sort of thing. It is rather a deeply meditative travel book, with chapters set in Paris, Cambodia, Libya, Amsterdam, and southern Thailand, and a narrative voice that is sly, lyrical, self-cynical, and painfully funny. The funny parts (which are always also More...

6 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 27, 2011

MJ rated it:

Geoff takes various shirts, various drugs, and various girls, to various locations around the world, intellectualising as he goes, sometimes having impish larks along the way, sometimes having nervous breakdowns, sometimes having sex with black women. At first, I was amused at this bourgeois intellect mincing around like a Club 18-30 member, then I found his antics a little drab, indulgent and flâneurish. At first his laid-back prose reads like a treat, but lapses at midpoint into a meandering a More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2008

Brian rated it:

At first I kind of liked the book, then I thought the author was a miserable wanker. After a while the essays devolved into a typical pattern of him moving to a new city, pretending to write or work on a book or something, meet a woman, sleep with her or not, engage in some dialogue that was vaguely West Wing-esque, then ingest some controlled substances and finally wrap it up in a bit of hackneyed wisdom. Somewhere along the last or second to last essay he managed to fashion a memoir out of a More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Apr 02, 2009

Michael rated it:

A collection of loosely linked -- well, not travel pieces, really, just essays from someone who's ended up moving around rather a lot. As a narrator, Dyer's enormously endearing as he wanders around, equal parts gung-ho and despondent, alternately quoting Auden and dropping acid. For Dyer the writer, Englishness -- or a characteristic I like to pretend is Englishness -- is a tremendous boon. Because this is really a Journey book, about a Seeker on a sort of stumbling, stoned search for transcend More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2010

Sean rated it:

Geoff Dyer races toward oblivion in this collection of travel essays, on a worldwide search for tranquility. He only sometimes finds it, and then only when he isn't looking. You would think, for example, that walking through Paris with a beautiful woman would translate easily into an idyllic experience, but you would be wrong. There are beautiful passages in the later stories about the transcendence to be found observing ancient Roman ruins and the beauty of the world seen through the right pair More...

2 comments like

Jun 11, 2009

Matt rated it:

I feel very lucky that I've seen Tarkovsky's _Stalker_, because that movie plays a large role in the thematic architecture of this book of what is, ostensibly at least, a book of travel essays. For what it's worth, I'm not sure I got the same thing out of _Stalker_ that Dyer did, but well, different strokes, and he does get a lot out of the concept of "the zone."

Anyhow, this is a really wonderful book-- lots of great writing, mostly, with some admirably strange adventures a More...

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May 03, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

The first essay is very entertaining. The second essay is entertaining. And... so on down the line.

Here is my problem with this collection: there is a formula that emerges after you read about three of the essays. Here is it:

a) Dyer arrives in a foreign city.
b) Dyer quickly befriends a fellow traveler/crank/drugged-out loony.
c) Said Loony introduced Dyer to Very Hot Girl.
d) Dyer & Loony acquire some drugs.
e) Dyer & Loony wander arou More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 05, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

I really got to loathe Mr. Dyer. I really thought he was a selfish shallow bastard by the end. He made me uncomfortable and afraid of ever running into him at a bar or something. I'm actually surprised by the number of people who enjoyed this book and was entertained for about .000008th of a second to re-read it and therefore rejudge. But then I came to my senses. I remember hating the person and not the writing which is why it gets any stars.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 01, 2009

N. rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jul 25, 2011

Sunil rated it:

Perhaps the best post modern travel experiences captured into a book ever. Dyer writes from airports to photography to hotels to loneliness to women ( all of which I can easily relate to) in his own inimitable style - fusion of history, memoir, travelogue, philosophy creating arguably an unique way of looking and perceiving things.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Colin N. rated it:

I’ve enjoyed Dyer’s fiction and nonfiction, so picked this up after happening across it being sold by a street vendor. I was on my way to sit outside and have a glass of wine before meeting people for dinner and was looking for something light and entertaining. I am happy to say this was just the right pick.

Essentially a book of travel essays, but more the musings of the author as he happened to be traveling, I found it very amusing. Dyer describes various relationships that he entered into More...

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Jul 20, 2009

Clare added it

Completely enjoyable. To quibble over Dyer's life choices or (occasionally, and somewhat) offensive opinions is to deny yourself of an easy and mostly intelligent read that takes you many places you might not visit in this life: Cambodia, Leptis Magna, or...Detroit. Your own desire or reluctance to visit the cities he describes does not magnify or diminish each essay; and such tourist traps as Paris are given a new look when Dyer tells of an afternoon walk through the 11e with a woman he has p More...

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Apr 11, 2007

Ben rated it:

Something about a guy who writes almost completely about not writing, being mad at himself for not writing, and about the minutia of his own life that I both love and hate. Mostly love, though, and I hate that about it.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2007

Lewis rated it:

A collection of vaguely connected travel writings that functions more as an insight into states of mind rather than a description of places. Very interesting and definitely worth a look.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 11, 2009

Lauren rated it:

and humorous in places. I would have liked to give it a 2 1/2. It is too well written to get a 2. But his self-demeaning characterizations, seemed so, well, self-congratulatory. Here's me refusing to buy a bottle of coke from a poor third-world kid--aren't I naughty? But so very honest. Me, an intellectual, no, definitely not. I kept feeling like he was waiting for someone to pat him on the head and say "oh, you naughty scamp." Someone should tell him that boyishness isn't charming aft More...

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Apr 29, 2009

Charlotte rated it:

Read mostly in short bursts each morning while drying my hair. This book is so not about yoga. It keeps pretending also not not be about antiquity, but it is actually about antiquity quite a bit, and about drugs, and loneliness. I almost gave it up several times, when the macho drug-doing/"I'm not being macho, I'm too scared to sleep with this woman, oh okay, I'll sleep with her if she forces me to" stuff got to be a leetle much, but stayed with it for the travelogues, and the art-writ More...

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Aug 13, 2009

Shannon rated it:

I do like a good travelogue and can more than appreciate many of the qualities that spur both Geoff Dyer's wanderlust and his stagnation. I have a harder time getting over Dyer's über self-conscious windbaggery. He seems to take great pains to explain how he is cowardly (to prove he is macho and devil may care brave) deeply troubled by and nervous around attractive women (to prove he is just naturally sexually magnetic) and lazy. OK...that last one he seems pretty comfy with.

It's no More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 11, 2009

Sarah rated it:

I got a water-stained, mildewed copy of this book for $1.50 in a pile of drecky best seller romances in a little (there are not any other kind here) bookstore on Ko Tao. I like Dyer. This is a book written by an intellectual who manages to not sound like one- his writing is unaffected, sweetly self-examining, meandering, and philosophical. He can talk about John Berger and Auden, Rilke and Borges while also sailing through ripping travel yarns and romantic misadventures. Refreshingly genre-defyi More...

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Dec 07, 2007

Dawn rated it:

Moments of intriguing thoughts surrounded by not so intriguing ramblings. Don't think I could recommend this one.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 27, 2008

Joe rated it:

Hey, a Geoff Dyer book I haven't read before!
Good stuff, and typically unconventional. I liked it, and will read it again, though I don't think I can comment on it much until I read it a few more times. I will say that like much of Dyer's non-fiction (or rather, non-novels), he does a fascinating job of weaving history and, in this case, travel, into personal reflections, commentary, and larger themes. It's comparable in many ways to Out of Sheer Rage, or at least that's the book of his th More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Lesley rated it:

This was decent vacation reading, with its short essays that could be finished quickly and then put aside. It passed the time. But even though Dyer does offer one or two witty observations about travel, I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. I started skipping paragraphs when I saw he'd launched into another self-satisfied philosophical analysis. These kinds of paragraphs were so long and so numerous that eventually I wondered if he was actually making a joke of it--if he was writing a parody More...

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Jan 02, 2008

Brandi rated it:

Such an interesting title. Such uninteresting insides.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2009

Katie rated it:

Though I think it's intentional, Dyer makes himself out to be a real jerk at the outset of this travel memoir. I frequently really wish I could do something to help him, but at other times I just want to shut the book and let him continue his self-absorbed ways. I guess it really is about self-discovery, though, because he manages to redeem himself by the end.

And, I can't fail to mention, it's uproariously funny. I had to stop reading aloud to my travel companion the funny passa More...

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Jul 24, 2007

Kathryn rated it:

I judged this book by its cover and was totally right.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2011

Darran added it

A good light read. I enjoyed it, though not to the extent that the hyperbolic blurbs would have you believe. He certainly isn't the greatest living British writer, as one critic said. Still, it was a good, fun read. I laughed out loud a couple of times, mainly during the drug stories and mainly out of a sense of recognition. I like his idle, hedonistic, slacker aesthete persona which reminds me of a contemporary Oscar Wilde. Read it, though you may feel jealous of his lazy, artsy, drug fueled, g More...

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Oct 07, 2009

Seasweetie rated it:

"At first it was fun, Mardi Gras. I like the sport of trying to catch stuff - plastic beakers, beads and other trinkets, rubbish really - thrown from the crazy floats inching through the crowded streets. It was like a cross between basketball and being in a mob of refugees scrambling for food rations thrown by soldiers." - Written in 2003, this felt prophetic of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Otherwise, a self-serving piece describing how the author does drugs everywhere he goe More...

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Jun 01, 2007

laura rated it:

disappointing.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 31, 2010

emma rated it:

This was the second of Dyer's books that I've read, and what I adored about his work in Jeff in Venice..., what seemed so fresh and hilarious, seems more like a self-absorbed way for the narrator to shield himself from actually experiencing anything. Which may make for interesting characters in pop culture, but only goes so far as internal dialogue. (To be honest, I'm not even sure which of the two books is older, but it doesn't matter.) Dyer is hilarious, elegant and incisive, but I don't recom More...

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Jul 30, 2008

Jim rated it:

I was a little ambivalent about this one, alternating between loving it and thinking it was moderately OK. This isn't my favorite book by this author, but it was a mostly engaging read.

The book is a collection of travel essays cum anecdotal narratives of time spent in various locales, ranging from Southeast Asia to Europe to gritty American cities. Through it all, Dyer and his companions get high, make aesthetic comments on the landscape, engage in the jargon of Eastern spiritualism More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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