Finally getting on with another #20BooksOfSummer book after a diversion into the Kindle (and although I’ve got another on the go now, then we’re all about Iris Murdoch and Henry II for a bit). I do feel bad that I’ve only got to Book 6 so far but then it’s not a challenge you’re ever made to feel bad about, so I need to stop that!

I also report on a DNF that I really didn’t take to – I was reading it for NetGalley and I’ll paste here the notes I put there. I did skim the whole thing but didn’t take in every word, so I’m not counting it as a book properly read!

Robert MacFarlane – “The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot”

(21 August 2017, Oxfam)

Apparently third in his trilogy, but the one I’d heard of, spotted in Oxfam Books. I was a bit worried about this as a few of my readers had said it had fallen a bit flat for them, however I’m happy to report that I loved it!

There were a few icky bits, with dead birds and a VERY odd sculptor, but nothing I couldn’t cope with. There was also a funny supernaturally bit near the start but by the time I got to another nearer the end, I’d realised there isn’t a lot of Woo to this writer, and when the old ways and their old walkers are concerned, sometimes slightly uncanny things happen.

MacFarlane weaves in the lives and works of other writers, especially Edward Thomas, whose home locations he visits and whose life he tells, but also people like Adam Nicolson (hooray!) whose Shiant Isles he memorably visits. The old ways turn out not to just be holloways and sunken tracks, ridge ways and drovers’ paths, but also sea paths and shifting estuarine mud projects. I loved learning about how paths develop and remain (that requires common care and common practice) and learning about how “desire paths” can supersede and impose themselves on official routes. The book wears its learning lightly, though, and I think you still get a sense of the human behind it – especially when he describes a walk made to his grandfather’s funeral, which I found very moving.

Although he experiences danger, particularly in the muddy Broomway, most of the book is about walks with friends, describing the natural world and particularly birds, and encountering various characters along the way, again, also covering an idea of who has walked in the British countryside and when. I enjoyed the parts in Britain most, but the travels abroad, especially his encounter with vultures in Spain, were interesting, too. He has lots to say about pilgrimage and talks of pilgrims.

I did like a quotation I pulled from his wet walk of the Broomway, when he’s worrying about the tide rushing in:

For some reason, I couldn’t overcome my sense of tides as volatile rather than fixed, capricious rather than regulated. What if the tides disobeyed the moon, on this day of all days? (p.68)

Who hasn’t felt that, when crossing a causeway or descending to a beach?

The index, in categories, is a bit odd, but he thanks the indexer by name, which is lovely. So all in all a great book that I’m glad I read.

This was Book 6 in my 20BooksOfSummer project.

Helen Cullen – “The Lost Letters of William Woolf”

(from NetGalley, May 2018 – skimmed after about 25%)

I was intrigued by the synopsis and, like other reviewers, was interested in the idea of the Department of Lost Letters and all the different parcels that had gone astray and had to be reunited with their owners or addressees. The parts of the book which covered this were great, however I was not expecting the actual main theme of the book, picking over a marriage gone sour, and I found this quite depressing and not something I would look forward to reading about. And then it was very much “tell” and not “show” so not really interesting as such. I ended up skimming it, so I can’t review it on my book blog, but got a good general idea of it. What a shame as it could have been so good. There’s no mention of the marriage in the synopsis so maybe the publisher was aware it wasn’t this aspect that would sell the book. The very ending, the epilogue, was so pat and tidy as to grate, an assumption made that if something is settled upon as an ending, so it will happen. I’m sure lots of people will like this, but not for me, sorry.

How are your reading projects going?