Facing the Hunter - David Adams Richards

Part memoir, part examination of the reality and issues around hunting.  He hits on his usual themes - the reality of a somewhat inarticulate rural underclass, the unreality of the views of urban, politically correct "intellectuals" who are so distanced from this reality - and also the historical reality of Canada until recently.  There are also some wonderful passages about moving through the woods and experiencing wild spaces, and the kinds of skills and awareness you need to be fully there.
As good as any of his fiction, with that same distinct voice, though toned down some.
An important part of his oeuvre.

Border - Kapka Kassabova

Part travelogue, part self-reflective inner journey.   I am not sure about this using of place almost as a metaphor for some internal landscape of self-exploration, and self-expression, examination of inner conflict and emotions.
What make this book interesting is the setting - the border area between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece.  This is an area with a very charged history, from Ottoman times, through the Balkan Wars, and into the 20th C Cold War period.    Kassabova does explore some interesting places in the Rhodopes in both Greece and Bulgaria.  She also explores some interesting sounding areas in the Strandzha area of Bulgaria, and also just on the other side of the border in Turkey.  All places I would like to visit. 
A very topical book, with all the current issues around migration, border crossing, etc.  Much of it currently set in the very area she explores in the book.

Walking Home - Simon Armitage

A poet's account of walking the length of the Pennine Way in England while surviving on people's generosity and hat collections at poetry readings.  Some interesting information about the trail, the walk and the weather but a lot of the book was about the author himself and also quirky English ways seen from the inside.  Not as interesting as some of the other walking accounts I have read, such as "The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot" by Macfarlane.

Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London - Matthew Beaumont

An exploration of night in the city of London through literary portraits from Chaucer to Dickens.
The book offers a great picture of the life of the street in pre-modern times, with all the sights, smells and sounds that are so often forgotten.
It is also a social history of the grind of poverty and the attempt to survive in periods when being poor and destitute was essentially criminalized.  At the same time it is a history of the elite's exercise of control and authority in the urban environment, and the sense of threat that the street presented them.  You get a sense of the authoritarian oppressiveness of the ruling class in English history.
There are several sections that explore nightwalking as an antiestablishment artistic/social phenomenon, which is interesting.  Links to Wordsworth and other Romantic poets.
Dickens was also a great nightwalker, mainly due to insomnia - this walking is given credit for his understanding of the street and the many inhabitants of it, both low and high.

Well-written.

The Rings of Saturn - W. G. Sebald

I have finally found an image to explain Sebald's fiction.  He is a flâneur but a flâneur in the worlds of culture and history.  A melancholy flâneur, with a penchant for savouring lost time.

This book is ostensibly an account of a walking holiday around a small section of the East Coast of England, south of Norwich.  Through his wanderings he connects with former inhabitants and recounts their lives, their artistic accomplishments and the usually sad state of their former homes and mansions.  He explores the rise and fall of towns as fishing dies out, as farming fades, recounting both their heydays and their decline.   Fallen aristocratic families eking out an existence in the dilapidated remains of once glorious homes; the story of Joseph Conrad, who once worked on ships in the area; Swinburne; other smaller artists, collectors, authors who live in the area.

He is like a traveller, and his books a record of the meeting of his mind with the ghosts of the past.

Four Fields - Tim Dee

An excellent example of a genre I really enjoy - reflections and explorations on encounters with a particular natural landscape.  Dee shows a great understanding of natural ecology and human history within the environment of fields - fens in England, grasslands in South Africa and the Midwest, exclusion zone around Chernobyl.

To Find
1. books/art by E A R Ennion (some in reference library TPL)

2. Sixty Years a Fenman, Arthur Randell (reference, TPL)

3. A.K. Astbury, The Black Fens (robarts)

4. The old stories : folk tales from East Anglia and the Fen country /

Kevin Crossley-Holland (Robarts)

5.  Tales from the fens / by W. H. Barrett Enid Porter. (request from Robarts/Downsview)

Happy City - Charles Montgomery

A book filled with fascinating observations and research about the crazy way we have come to see and live in our cities.  Too many to list here.  One:  inhabitants of Toronto and Vancouver express less satisfaction with life than people living in small towns and backwaters such as Sherbrooke and Brantford (!!!!!)

He looks at many of the unhealthy, unhappy trends in modern urban design and living.  He explores the negative outcomes of our obsessions with suburban sprawl.  He looks at the politics of power and inequality in modern urban environments, from the domination of the car to gentrification.

Throughout the book I met explanations for many of the things I disliked about my suburban living experience and also that I dislike in the changes in Toronto. Why walking is so unpleasant in the suburbs.  Why parks are often so uninviting.  Why the ROM addition is such an abomination.  Why areas like Harboufront, with their endless condos and planned recreational areas, remain lifeless and uninviting.  Why I was compelled to give up riding the subway this winter (the growing stress caused by repeated unreliability combined with a lack of power to circumvent the problem).

It also filled with inspirational stories of change for the better, like Bogata, Copenhagen, neighbourhoods and local movements around the world.

Definitely worth a reread.

Bread and Ashes: A Walk Through the Mountains of Georgia - Tony Anderson

A bit of a mix as a book.  Some good personal recollections of landscapes, people and places, mixed with a fair bit of anecdotal history from the ancient and recent past.  In describing his experiences and journeys, I find his personal point of view a bit too loud at times - too much judgement, too much commentary, not enough description or facts.  Particularly noticeable in the section on traveling in Eastern Turkey's former Georgian region.
He does present a clear picture of Georgian society and what it is like to travel in that context, if it hasn't changed in the past 10 years or so.

Most of the travels seem to have taken place in the 90s - I wonder how much it has changed since then?

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot - Robert MacFarlane

An absolutely brilliant book.  Wakes up the desire to explore the world from up close and inside the landscape.
An interesting contrast to Barry Lopez's writing on nature as wilderness.  Inevitably with MacFarlane, when he writes about Spain or England, it is both about nature and the layer upon layer of traces of human habitation that lie buried in these landscapes.  North America is just too new and too raw (and places far too high a value on the privacy of private property...)

Many references:

-  Icknied Way by Edward Thomas
-  Edward Thomas' poetry
- MacFarlane's other books
- George Borrow, Lavengro/Wild Wales 19th c
- Robert Louis Stevenson,  Songs of Travel
- John Muir
- Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter
- Sarn Helen (an old path in Wales)
- Tim Robinson - Stones of Aran
- Adam Nicolson - Sea Room:  An Island Life
- Nan Shepherd - The Grampian Quartet; The Living Mountain
- Raja Shehadeh - Palestinian Walks; A Rift in Time
- Christopher Tilley - The Phenomenology of Landscape
- Eric Ravilious - artist early 20th C
- Philip Gosse - Go to the Country
- Richard Holmes - Footsteps
- William Cobbet - Rural Rides