Landmarks
"Landmarks is a book about the power of language - 'strong style, single words' - to shape our sense of place. It is both a field guide to the literature the author loves (Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin and many more), and a 'word-hoard', gathering an astonishing archive of place-terms from old Norse to Anglo-Romani, living Norman to Hebridean Gaelic. Over the book's course, via its chapters, its glossaries and surprise of its postscript - we come to realize that words, well used, are not just a means to describe landscape, but also a way to know it, and to love it"--from publisher.
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4recommend
6mentions
5people
2015–2023years
83% recommend17% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- A wonderful book about such things (and other "place words") is "Landmarks" by Robert Macfarlane.
There does seem to be a richness that we're losing, in terms of our ability to describe nature. I often find myself struggling to describe places or to differentiate no-so-subtle (but also not trivially different) features (e.g., ravines cut by water flows of different rates and temporal consistencies). I love the collections people are making, but I find it hard to gain "fluency" in this way of describing nature. I guess that's an artifact of mostly being a "weekend warrior" when it comes to nature and most of my daily work revolving around science and computers.
[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536563/landmarks-by...
- We are loosing words to describe nature. I recommend reading "Landmarks" from Robert Macfarlane. The audiobook is excellent.
- I first heard about Claude Glass while reading "Landmarks"[0] by Robert Macfarlane. While Claude Glass was only briefly mentioned, "Landmarks" itself is one of those wonderfully deep books that invites slow reading. The richness of nature language (that we seem to be losing) has been rewarding for me to explore through Macarlane's experience. I paid attention to nature before, but since starting to read "Landmarks" I have more regularly zoomed in on details and how features of the landscape vary subtly from place to place.
[0] - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536563/landmarks-by...
Edit: Fixed author's first name. Thanks @zzleeper!
- I've listened to a couple of Robert Macfarlane's books recently after a recommendation from someone on HN - "The Old Ways" and "Landmarks". Both very different to what I usually read but very enjoyable.
I'm now reading Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain - which is every bit as good as Macfarlane suggests. Also planning on reading The Peregrine by J.A. Baker.
A review of the The Living Mountain: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/20/living-mountai...
- If you are interested in the relationship between language and landscape/environment then I'd strongly recommend Robert Macfarlane's book Landmarks [1][2]. Definitely one of my reading highlights of the last year.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarla...
[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Landmarks-Robert-Macfarlane/dp/02411...
- During the past six months I have been challenged intellectually and aesthetically by these works:
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger
Diary by Witold Gombrowicz
Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk
Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito
L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler
The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman
Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition
Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías
The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech
Earning The Rockies by Kaplan
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Nature Stories by Jules Renard
Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas
Olinger Stories by John Updike
Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett
At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson
Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson
Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
