A Field Guide to Getting Lost in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

May 12, 2015 Loretta rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, on-writing-and-creativity, reading-for-craft

I picked up the Kobo version of this book because last year, I came across this quote from it in an online class, and I actually typed up the quote and carried it around with me for quite a while: "the things we want are transformative, and we do not know, or only think we know, what is on the other side of that transformation".

The rest of the book lives up to the promise of that little snippet - thoughtful, unexpected, wonderful thoughts on all the ways we can be lost. I highlighted entire chu ...more

Like · see review

Jan 18, 2017 neil rated it it was amazing

Solnit writes about different ways to be lost. She draws on art and autobiography and history and nature to look at the pleasures and sorrows of various types of lostness. The book reminds me of Annie Dillard and Maggie Nelson, crossed with some melancholy and history. It's wonderful. I read it while a bit lost myself, alone in a country where I didn't speak the language (often a pleasant kind of lostness), and it was what I needed. And, my god, can she put together a beautiful sentence. ...more

Like · see review

Mar 19, 2008 Caroline Donahue rated it really liked it

Beautiful writing. This is one of those books where it is nearly impossible to say what it is about, but the images she uses and the way that she meanders through the idea of getting lost is really beautiful.

Like · see review