Landmarks
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Landmarks
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Roy McMillan
About this listen
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Landmarks, a fascinating exploration of the relationship between language and landscapes by Robert Macfarlane, read by Roy McMillan.
Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to describe land, nature, and weather.
Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd, and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape and a vital means of coming to love it.
The audiobook version contains an exclusive bonus chapter - a recording of Finlay MacLeod (novelist, historian, broadcaster, archivist, and one of the dedicatees of Landmarks) reading words and definitions from his Peat Glossary for the Isle of Lewis.
This hoard of rare and evocative terms was one of the inspiring documents for the book.
Finlay's voice is also used as a divider between chapters, and the other glossaries in the text are bracketed with appropriate sound effects.
©2015 Robert Macfarlane (P)2015 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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).
Routed in the land...flies in the mind.
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A wonderful book
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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.A taster for many other wonderful authors!
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Masterful
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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.This book is a poem
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