Reading: Thinking on My Feet
Nov. 2nd, 2019 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartI was only vaguely aware of Kate Humble as a TV presenter (I don't think I've ever watched a show she presented), but I have been looking out for books about walking that aren't written by men and had noted her Thinking on My Feet: The small joy of putting one foot in front of the other as a book I might want to try.
Thinking on My Feet is written in diary format, chronicling a year of Humble's walking (and sometimes running). I wasn't entirely enamoured of it to start with; the early sections involve rather a lot of walking in far-flung locations where Humble is working (Kenya, India) or on holiday (the Caribbean), and I was a little uncomfortable at these countries, where for many of the locals walking is the only option, being used as a backdrop for a white woman from a privileged Western country's narrative about the benefits of walking. However, I enjoyed the descriptions of walks nearer to Humble's home in the Welsh Marches, and as I kept going I found myself liking the book more. It didn't really seem to settle into its stride until about half-way through, when instead of being a day-by-day diary of short walks the whole "Summer" section is devoted to a single nine-day walk along the Wye Valley Way, from the river's source to Chepstow, while the "Autumn" section that follows has a much stronger thematic unity, exploring the connections between walking and mental health and including interviews with other people who have found that walking has positive effects on mental health and a New York therapist who conducts his appointments while walking. I felt that the second half of the book was much stronger than the first half, and wondered whether Humble had found that her theme only emerged gradually through the writing process, and she wasn't able to reshape the earlier material enough to completely fit it.
In the end, what I liked most about Thinking on My Feet (and the reason why the bits set in other countries worked least well for me) was the way it captured the everyday pleasure of walking and reminded me just how much I like getting out in the fresh air and countryside (not that I need reminding, really, but I don't always think about walking while I'm reading a book).
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC for review.
Thinking on My Feet is written in diary format, chronicling a year of Humble's walking (and sometimes running). I wasn't entirely enamoured of it to start with; the early sections involve rather a lot of walking in far-flung locations where Humble is working (Kenya, India) or on holiday (the Caribbean), and I was a little uncomfortable at these countries, where for many of the locals walking is the only option, being used as a backdrop for a white woman from a privileged Western country's narrative about the benefits of walking. However, I enjoyed the descriptions of walks nearer to Humble's home in the Welsh Marches, and as I kept going I found myself liking the book more. It didn't really seem to settle into its stride until about half-way through, when instead of being a day-by-day diary of short walks the whole "Summer" section is devoted to a single nine-day walk along the Wye Valley Way, from the river's source to Chepstow, while the "Autumn" section that follows has a much stronger thematic unity, exploring the connections between walking and mental health and including interviews with other people who have found that walking has positive effects on mental health and a New York therapist who conducts his appointments while walking. I felt that the second half of the book was much stronger than the first half, and wondered whether Humble had found that her theme only emerged gradually through the writing process, and she wasn't able to reshape the earlier material enough to completely fit it.
In the end, what I liked most about Thinking on My Feet (and the reason why the bits set in other countries worked least well for me) was the way it captured the everyday pleasure of walking and reminded me just how much I like getting out in the fresh air and countryside (not that I need reminding, really, but I don't always think about walking while I'm reading a book).
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC for review.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-03 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-03 11:03 am (UTC)(Then again, I know that I'm lucky to live very close to the countryside, on the outskirts of a small city with a lot of green space - when we lived in Coventry it felt like much more of an effort to get out of the city.)