Beautiful

A magical evocation of landscape and language, history and heritage. Eloquent, lyrical and poetic. Endlessly fascinating and charming. Buy it!

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8 people found this helpful

A taster for many other wonderful authors!

Would you consider the audio edition of Landmarks to be better than the print version?

Roy McMillan's voice is certainly a reason to choose the audio version.

What other book might you compare Landmarks to, and why?

The Old Ways also by Robert Macfarlane and read by Roy McMillan.

What about Roy McMillan’s performance did you like?

Brilliant!

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Laugh and cry out loud!

Any additional comments?

Because of this book I have now read other books that were superb. J A Bakers The Peregrine will now be one of my favourite books ever... it would be a brilliant audio book but I'd have to think hard about who could be the voice.

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5 people found this helpful

This book is a poem

Where does Landmarks rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I love Robert MacFarlane's books. His ideas about landscape and our relationship to it are endlessly stimulating. For me, because this is not a narrative as such, I sometimes had to rewind to pick up the thread of the thoughts.

Any additional comments?

The glossary of words for landscape features, beautifully read, is poetry and made me want to buy the physical book so I could browse at my own pace but the physical book is printed on such nasty paper I didn't.

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4 people found this helpful

Love it, but it's costing me a fortune!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. The author effortlessly takes you into his subjects. His writing is taut, precise and evocative.

What did you like best about this story?

Each chapter is dedicated to a different author/topic. Some reviewers didn't like this, but I loved it. It allowed for journeys into particular words and stories associated with the underlying topic that I found fascinating.

What does Roy McMillan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

He reads beautifully; with him the stories come alive. You are climbing the mountain with him, swimming in icy water alongside him, clambering into caves as he explores. It's a full on sensory experience.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes. It made me furious to learn nature related words were being removed from children's dictionaries as they were "no longer deemed relevant". It also created a burning desire to get out there and experience some of the places or things discussed.

Any additional comments?

I couldn't tear myself away from this recording. The only downside..I became so caught up in the books and authors described in each chapter that I've had to buy many of them AND a hard copy of Landmarks so that I have easy access to the glossaries!

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27 people found this helpful

Enjoy listening... then buy the book

I have listened to over 100 audiobooks in the last three years. Only once did I buy a book after listening to it. That book was Robert Macfarlane's "Old Ways" and the reason I bought the book was because Macfarlane's text is a reference to several worlds of interest and erudition. I knew I would go back to it and explore other avenues that it presented.

I will also buy "Landmarks" when it appears in paperback, for the same reasons. Even though many chapters are glossaries -- and not as well suited to listening as to reading -- the remaining chapters are chiefly an exposition of the writing of other "Nature" writers such as Nan Shepherd, J A Baker, Macfarlane's friend Roger Deakin, the American John Muir and others.

The result is an impassioned and expert dissertation on the rich language used in the past to define Nature, focussing on English, its dialects, and the Celtic languages of Britain.

The historical vignettes presented, such as the interaction between John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt resulting in the creation of Yosemite National Park, were fascinating and the final chapter, Childish, was a brilliant expansion of the theme.

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17 people found this helpful

Loved it.

Living on the isle of Lewis and hearing our mother tongue makes me feel so proud of our country

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9 people found this helpful

An excellent exploration of language and place

I have recently started to read, and listen to, the works of Robert MacFarlane and have been deeply impressed with his erudition and, perhaps more importantly, his pasion for his subject matter.

He is quite clearly fascinated with the complex and dynamic relationships people form with the landscape, with how others, particularly other exceptionally talented writers have approached the same or similar perspectives and philosophical points.

This leads to his work being deep, rich and layered with meanings and contexts.

MacFarlane manages to do this without leaving the reader behind, without any condescension so that we are swept along with his passion and can share in both his educated views and his almost child like wonder at the magic of it all.

This, and the other work I have read of MacFarlane, have been in the best tradition of academic work which makes accessible the knowledge of so much studying to the widest and hopefully most curious of readers.

I suspect that most of his readers will live in towns and cities, in a suburban landscape much removed from those he views quite tenderly and therein is the value; the link between people and the land from which they ultimately came.

And I hope this is not too disparaging to put at the end, it was beautiful read, and like all well narrated work the voice is ultimately subsumed by the words which is, of course, the point; to be a neutral conduit for the ideas within the work.

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A wonderful book

I have listened to this book on many occasions and love it. It celebrates writers who are in touch with specific aspects of the landscape or its wildlife - Cairngorm mountains, open water, peregrine Falcons etc. The writing is lyrical and it is beautifully read by Roy McMillan whose command of Gaelic names and words is stunning. My only reservation as an audio book is the many pages of glossary. It works for me as I listen in bed and regard this as a kind of soporific chant, although sometimes I get frustrated that by the time I hear a definition and realise I'm interested I have forgotten the word! I guess the answer is to buy it for kindle as well.

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5 people found this helpful

Loved this book!

Mesmerising journey through the ancient and barely remembered geography of the language of these Isles.

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2 people found this helpful

Routed in the land...flies in the mind.

The idea of this book is very attractive, to collect and collate the various terms that define our understanding of the old/current world around us through the peculiarities of language passed down in near history.

I was very happy with this and very interested - although not entirely satisfied in the way in which the promise was delivered through. The ‘falling short’ for me was that the individual characters who were used to deliver the message - a Lancastrian musician being one example - seemed to lack depth of characterisation and, where offered, their link with the land seemed at times tenuous. This, of course, from me as anything but a son of the land - albeit, a Welsh and Irish heritage does give one a sense of entitlement when it comes to the wide-open spaces in the world of nature-spirituality.

What was enlightening, was the worrying news that so many common-place words now have no place (and are they so common?) with the youngest literate generation that we currently have in our care. If nothing else, the stir that this caused me was justification enough to read this work - but, to be fair there were lots of small pleasures along the route (Tyneside to South Shields, south along the river on a daily commute as it happens).

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4 people found this helpful