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A Field Guide to Getting Lost
 
 
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A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Paperback)

by Rebecca Solnit (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (6 April 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1841957453
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841957456
  • Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 79,421 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

"'Flawless scintillating prose, writing it is impossible not to admire' Financial Times "Radical, humane, witty, sometimes wonderfully dandyish, at other times, impassioned and serious." Allain de Botton (on Wanderlust) "Fascinating, inspiring and beautifully written." George Monbiot (on Hope in the Dark)"


Product Description

'Never to get lost is not to live.' "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" is a provocative investigation into the nature of loss, losing and being lost. Starting from the revelation that what is totally unknown to you is usually what you most need to discover, this book explores how finding that unknown quantity frequently requires getting lost to begin with. Exquisitely written, this book manages to be both a heartfelt memoir, and a highly accomplished cultural study, with the bird's eye perspective of one of the world's most perceptive critics. Taking in subjects as eclectic as mapmaking and memory, Hitchcock and Renaissance painting, this book confronts the challenge of living with uncertainty.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Get lost!, 16 May 2009
By B. J. Whitehouse "book, film & music lover." (Birmingham, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
This review is from: A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Hardcover)
Rebecca Solnit is an essayist/writer from San Francisco and author of a number of successful books including A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I remember reading the field guide a year or so ago but wasn't able to quote more than a few lines from chapter two: the blue of distance. There was something about Simone Weil, the Hindu God Krishna & light, lots and lots of light. I needed to revisit the book, time had dulled my memory of the book but I vividly remember my initial breathless reaction to the writing, having to lay the book down and pace my flat repeating the words and them settling like dust around me. I remember carrying the book with my in my shoulder bag & dipping into it in the public park close to where I live in Edgbaston, Birmingham. I didn't remain seated for long during my reading, something in Solnit's writing drove me to my feet and meant I didn't pay much attention to where I was walking. I walked safely but managed to get lost in the process, which I think Solnit would be proud of.

Rereading the book to prepare for this review has been a deeply rewarding experience and have discovered that it has subtly influenced my reading over the last year or so. Authors quoted or books mentioned have quietly appeared on my bookshelf, as if summoned by being read. I can't claim this book will change your life, I'm not even sure it's what changed mine but I can trace the resonance of phrases, the impish nudge towards uncertainty and the words "the blue of distance" back to this book.

Solnit shares from her own experience, quotes liberally from other authors and is unashamedly intelligent and rich in her writing but is in no way alienating with her prose. She holds our attention whilst writing eloquently about loss, being lost and uncertainty. She comes back again and again in the book to the idea of "the blue of distance", she turns it over like a paperweight and explores from different angles.

You should rush out and buy this book, read it, forget about it and then reread it. There's a strange alchemy at work when you're reading it and it will mark you once you've finished. Your dreams will shift to a more bluish hue, you'll want to answer the call of adventure, the lure of the horizon and find yourself sneaking through open doors at every opportunity. My review stands as the last signpost before you wander into your own desert following Solnit's footprints in sand and I encourage you to chase her ideas where they lead you. Toss that map aside, enjoying being uncertain and above all: Get lost!
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