Tag: Books on walking
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Dickens’s night walks
In my late teens and early twenties I read a lot of Charles Dickens. In Peter Ackroyd’s (unabridged) biography Dickens (1990), I learned more about the man behind the writing. An aspect of his life that really fascinated me was the long nocturnal walks Dickens would take to try and deal with insomnia and the…
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The Road Is How
In The Road Is How, Trevor Herriot writes about how while still recovering from an accident, he made a three day walk from his home in Regina to a cabin his family has at Cherry Lake. Trevor is a wonderful writer and attentive observer of the natural world; Daniel Baird in The Walrus called him…
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Iain Sinclair’s London
Iain Sinclair has spent decades roaming the British capital on foot and excavating the city’s psychogeography in books such as London Orbital, where he follows the route of the M25 motorway, and London Overground, where he walks alongside the city’s Overground rail network. Sinclair has said that 2017’s The Last London is his final book…
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Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane has walked in places I never will and his books about his journeys – most of which take place on foot – have been some of my favourites over the past decade or so; he’s a wonderful writer. Macfarlane described his third book The Old Ways (2012) as being about, “the relationship between…
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Flânerie
I was first introduced to the word flâneur and the ideas behind it in grad school. In learning about it, I realised in many ways flânerie described behaviour I’d be pursuing for some time: leisurely strolling through cities, observing the variety of activities an urban environment offers. It’s one of the things I most enjoy…
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Matthew R. Anderson – Pedestrian
I had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Anderson about his books The Good Walk and Someone Else’s Saint, walking on the prairies, and pilgrimage. It was my good fortune that Matthew was back in Saskatchewan to mark the 10th anniversary of the walk from Wood Mountain to the Cypress Hills that forms a significant…
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Shawn Micallef – Pedestrian
I had the pleasure of talking with Shawn Micallef about his book Stroll, Spacing magazine, and walking in Toronto. Shawn and I also recorded a walk in the neighbourhood around Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto, an area familiar to both of us. Shawn lives south of Dufferin Grove Park, and I lived near the intersection…
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Wanderlust
The American writer Rebecca Solnit‘s 2001 Wanderlust: A History of Walking is an essential book for anyone interested in thinking about walking. “Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down.” Wanderlust is wide-ranging and…
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The Songlines
An early influence on what is becoming Project Pedestrian is Bruce Chatwin’s 1987 book The Songlines, which made me think about walking as more than just a way to get from A to B. Chatwin’s biographer Nicholas Shakespeare writes about Chatwin and The Songlines. Michael Ignatieff interviewed Chatwin about The Songlines for Granta.
Project Pedestrian 