was a little hard going but well worth the effort!

sent to fellow bookcrosser Lindlec....hope u enjoy it!

Thankyou for sending this RABCK - I look forward to reading over the Xmas period.

TBR

Released on Monday, February 23, 2004 at Postal Swap in Nottingham, England United Kingdom.

Sending to tangledthreads.

I actually couldn't get into this unfortunately and found it terribly difficult. I gave it 80 pages and then decided that it would be better if I sent it on to another bookcrosser who could enjoy it.

Now being sent to tangledthreads.

Received from Lindlec at Meetup (Silk Mill pub) this evening. I don't normally read non-fiction, but have read a lot of fiction with Australian roots, so am very interested to get some background info...

I started reading expecting a very dry and difficult prose based on what I'd heard about the book previously, but I found it a very easy read, and got into it straight away. In fact, I found it hard to put down for at least the first half of the book.

I was disappointed that I didn't learn a huge amount more about the songlines themselves as the book progressed - it became more about the life (in general) of aboriginals in contemporary Australia. That was interesting, too. I didn't mind that so much but just thought that as the book was named for the songlines, they might have been studied in a bit more depth.

What I wasn't interested in were the more diverse strayings from the path, for example the dippings into Chatwin's notebooks (I hope he has discovered that Moleskine notebooks are available again, from Waterstone's and probably other places, too). The excerpts themselves were probably interesting in their own right - and I could see that some of them did relate in an abstract way to the subject at hand - but they weren't what I picked up the book to read. There was also too much of Chatwin getting to places and constantly proving himself worthy before information being brought forth than I really cared for.

Probably what I took exception to was simply that this is travel lit rather than a social history - that it was written from a personal rather than detached point of view. As someone who mainly reads novels you would think this style would appeal to me, but I think it is mainly because I looked to this as something different, to get some background information on the novels I read that I was slightly disappointed with this, overall. I did find it easy to read, though, and the information that I did glean from it was worthwhile.

Will probably release at Nottingham Meetup next Saturday...

Released on Saturday, May 22, 2004 at Wetherspoons Pub, South Parade, Old Market Square in Nottingham, England United Kingdom.

Nobody picked this one up at Meetup, so left on bottom shelf (right hand side) of bookcase on ground floor, at rear of pub.

I picked this up on a Christmas shopping expedition to Nottingham's German Market. The picture is supposed to be cat-plays-digeridoo. Ho-hum!

The hyperbole on the back cover was starting to put me off this book, it all sounded a bit heavy going. It turned out to be a very readable, though slightly frustrating book.

The travelogue section provides a wonderful insight into life in the Australian outback, I would have liked a bit more of this. This travelogue is interupted by a long series of thoughts and notes on the nature of mans evolution, migration, communication, song etc, which seriously upsets the flow of the book. This distillation of Chatwins notes from several years of travel and research are fascinating in themselves, but would have been much better presented in a seperate book. I note from the resume that the author died in 1989, only two years after this book was first published. This book reads too much like a work in progress to me, I suspect he just ran out of time to complete what could have been a much better assembly of his ideas.

RELEASE NOTES:

Caught this book at Just Fair Trade in Leicester (great shop with lots of great gifts that are of course Fairly Traded) customer gave it to me so I am going to give it a bash.

Not my type of book