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Product Description
Review
On Map Addict:
'Mike Parker offers an exhilarating celebration of the humble map.' Mail on Sunday
This excellent book on the pleasures of maps and navigation, which is also a withering attack on the infantilisation of the satnav age’. Daily Telegraph
‘A highly engaging and thoughtful, haphazard and personal, meander around maps and map-related arcane.' Daily Mail
'This eclectic, funny and warm book should be on the shelves of everyone who has spent hours staring at a map.' The Great Outdoors
'A witty entreaty to leave the satnav in the car, and to head for the hills with the Ordnance Survey.' BBC Country File magazine
‘Parker proves a witty and engaging guide’ Guardian
‘Mike Parker makes of a book about footpaths a wonderfully exhilarating literary excursion on and off a hundred beaten tracks’ – Jan Morris CBE , historian, author and travel writer
‘Mike Parker’s book on footpaths is a genuine page-turner’. – Walk Magazine
Review
On Map Addict: 'Mike Parker offers an exhilarating celebration of the humble map.' Mail on Sunday This excellent book on the pleasures of maps and navigation, which is also a withering attack on the infantilisation of the satnav age'. Daily Telegraph 'A highly engaging and thoughtful, haphazard and personal, meander around maps and map-related arcane.' Daily Mail 'This eclectic, funny and warm book should be on the shelves of everyone who has spent hours staring at a map.' The Great Outdoors 'A witty entreaty to leave the satnav in the car, and to head for the hills with the Ordnance Survey.' BBC Country File magazine 'Parker proves a witty and engaging guide' Guardian 'Mike Parker makes of a book about footpaths a wonderfully exhilarating literary excursion on and off a hundred beaten tracks' -- Jan Morris CBE , historian, author and travel writer 'Mike Parker's book on footpaths is a genuine page-turner'. -- Walk Magazine
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I bought the book without much thought into what it was going to be about or who had written it and I was wonderfully surprised. Firstly it offers lots of interesting historical and current information on the state of roaming freely in the UK, how the Right to Roam act came into place and the battles that have been fought to secure it. More interesting than that, it is an account of one man and his link to walking and how he finds it, the best word to describe the book is 'personal' - it is written in a unique and opinionated style while not causing you to feel like you are reading a propaganda manual. Thoroughly enjoyable and well worth a read for anyone interested in the slightest in what might lie beyond their back garden.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having enjoyed map addict so much I couldn't wait for this one to come out and it didn't disappoint. Lots of fascinating facts written in a humorus and absorbing way. Right I'm off for a walk now.
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I really wanted to like this book. I really expected to enjoy it. I enjoyed his previous book, "Map Addict". When I found out it was on sale I bought it straight away. I had it with me as holiday reading, while walking a long distance foot path and then staying in the Lakes. There is some really interesting stuff in here: a chapter about the struggle for access rights in the north, which goes beyond the usual account of the Kinder trespass, to other acts of civil disobedience, a chapter on battling super-rich southern landlords, an account of Parker's own walking of a long distance path, the Ridgeway, a discussion of the merits of coastal and river walking, a fascinating chapter about walking old ways with religious connections.
However, about a third of the way through, I found that I wasn't enjoying it as much as I was expecting and quickly realised that Parker spends much of the time sneering. Sneering at his fellow walkers, sneering at people who plan their walks, sneering at people who work 9 to 5 and live on new build estates, sneering at coastal walking as against walking by grubby canals and rivers.
Now that would not necessarily be a bad thing were his sneering to be witty and original. It isn't. He picks out lame old targets and attacks them with the blunt and rusty implement of stereotyping. He has a go at health and safety legislation. He bravely portrays schoolboys who like science and maths as wearing bottle bottom glasses. In talking about people living in a new village he creatively talks about "...most of the decisions to move to Mawsley were taken by whippet thin wives, which their considerably heftier husbands went along with for an easier life". The worst bit of stereotyping comes early on, when having written interestingly about the fight for footpaths in the northwest, he attempts to write phonetic northern speech, and describes Edale and Castleton in a fashion which would be dismissed as unoriginal in a 10 year old's hands. It's not just that this is nasty writing, it is lazy writing.
All in all Parker seems intent on portraying himself as a trendy media leftie, who while claiming still to cling to radicalism has become a reactionary conservative (with a small "c") misanthrope. If anybody decided to launch a left wing answer to the Daily Mail, Mike Parker would be a shoe in as editor in chief.
I started this book wanting to be able to recommend it, but sadly I can't.
However, about a third of the way through, I found that I wasn't enjoying it as much as I was expecting and quickly realised that Parker spends much of the time sneering. Sneering at his fellow walkers, sneering at people who plan their walks, sneering at people who work 9 to 5 and live on new build estates, sneering at coastal walking as against walking by grubby canals and rivers.
Now that would not necessarily be a bad thing were his sneering to be witty and original. It isn't. He picks out lame old targets and attacks them with the blunt and rusty implement of stereotyping. He has a go at health and safety legislation. He bravely portrays schoolboys who like science and maths as wearing bottle bottom glasses. In talking about people living in a new village he creatively talks about "...most of the decisions to move to Mawsley were taken by whippet thin wives, which their considerably heftier husbands went along with for an easier life". The worst bit of stereotyping comes early on, when having written interestingly about the fight for footpaths in the northwest, he attempts to write phonetic northern speech, and describes Edale and Castleton in a fashion which would be dismissed as unoriginal in a 10 year old's hands. It's not just that this is nasty writing, it is lazy writing.
All in all Parker seems intent on portraying himself as a trendy media leftie, who while claiming still to cling to radicalism has become a reactionary conservative (with a small "c") misanthrope. If anybody decided to launch a left wing answer to the Daily Mail, Mike Parker would be a shoe in as editor in chief.
I started this book wanting to be able to recommend it, but sadly I can't.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
An Good Read
I enjoyed Mike Parker's earlier book "Map Addict", and was keen to get my hands on this one.
It contains and irreverent collections of stories and experiences, giving... Read more
It contains and irreverent collections of stories and experiences, giving... Read more
Published 5 months ago by J. Wright
Fascinating read
Very enjoyable read. Extremely well researched and full of interesting information and facts. The writer has a very easy, amusing and entertaining style. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Bonnie
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