A Time of Gifts : : on Foot to Constantinople : From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

Locations
Call Number: 914.045 Fe
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	914.045 Fe	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	914.045 Fe	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Originally published: London : J. Murray, c1977.
Includes index.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

not submitted by tcaldera97 on June 22, 2011, 2:34pm so good to my taste

Utterly awful submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on August 14, 2013, 9:09pm I absolutely do not understand how this book has such a good rating on Amazon and GoodReads -- and my entire book club of 12 avid readers agrees, so it's not just me.

This seemed like such a great idea: a coming-of-age story, travel, Germany between the two World Wars. How much cooler could a book get? The author led a fascinating life, wrote a ton of books, and the books are well-rated. We thought this was a sure-fire winner.

Only two of 12 people finished it, one because she's the one who recommended it and the other because she didn't finish the previous month's book and felt guilty. I finish almost all books I start, and definitely finish book club books, and couldn't finish this one. I would have given up by page 60, but soldiered on till about half way through (p. 140-ish?). Horrid. Just plain horrid.

And here's mostly why. I read books for the people. I want to learn about characters; I want to hear people interact; I love to learn about culture. If you want to make it sound formal, it's psychology and sociology that interest me... in a story I want action, interaction, decisions, consequences! And there was very nearly NONE of this in this book. How Fermor could set out to cross Europe on foot and write about it WITHOUT writing about the people he met is beyond me. I'm still not sure what he filled the pages with, because we don't really learn about HIM, either. I think maybe he filled pages with the land, roads, and buildings, but I'm not even sure about that.

If even two pages out of any twenty included encounters with other people, I might be overestimating. And even then, he not infrequently wrote their utterances in German without translating them, which is utterly useless to me with my two semesters of college German 12 years ago.

A complete waste of time.

Slow submitted by rachel on July 9, 2015, 4:25pm I did not think this book was awful, but it is a particular kind of travel narrative that not everyone enjoys. The descriptions are scenic and detailed but there is very little in terms of human interactions or compelling dramas. The prose is well-written.