Ten Outstanding Books That Combine Walking and Thinking

Inspired by Verso Books’ excellent Guide to Political Walking, below is my guide to books that effortlessly combine walking, with musing about culture, literature, politics and geography, a form of exercise that I endorse.

Wanderlust – Rebecca Solnit
A Time of Gifts – Patrick Leigh Fermor
Wildwood – Roger Deakin
The Wild Places – Robert Macfarlane
The Arcades Project – Walter Benjamin
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways – Phil Smith
A Field Guide to Getting Lost – Rebecca Solnit
Psychogeography by Will Self
The Lost Art of Walking – Geoff Nicholson

I’ll also point you to Paul K. Lyons’ compelling straight line walk across London, which some enterprising publisher ought to pick up.

Please make suggestions of any books that ought to expand this list.

17 thoughts on “Ten Outstanding Books That Combine Walking and Thinking”

Interesting list. I was wondering if you’re the one who asked suggestions from the Paris Review. It had several recommendations (here, including the comments). Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn can also be considered.

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Anthony on May 13, 2012 at 15:43 said:

Thanks, I missed that Paris Review list and it’s very good. How could I forget ‘The Rings of Saturn’?

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This may be completely off topic, but I thought of Remainder by Tom McCarthy.

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Anthony on May 13, 2012 at 15:41 said:

Off topic or not, it’s a brilliant book, isn’t it? Have you read other McCarthy books?

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- Alexia Rose_Amer on May 27, 2012 at 22:23 said:
  
  Sorry for the late answer, no I haven’t, I don’t read much fiction now. My bestfriend read it and was haunted by it, so she gave it to me and I have to say that it stayed in my mind for a long time…
  
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I’ve only just started reading Open City, by Teju Cole, but it seems like a perfect fit for your list — the narrator wanders the streets of Manhattan. Lots of people have compared it to Sebald (whom I’ve never read).

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Anthony on May 14, 2012 at 20:04 said:

I loved Open City, Isabella, and missed it and Sebald’s Rings of Saturn. The list above is essentially non-fiction; it might be fun to do a separate list of only fictional works.

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Remainder is marvellous, not sure it’s a walking book though.

Fascinating list Anthony. Are there any you’d single out for particular praise or criticism?

The Benjamin always looks perhaps just a tad daunting.

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Anthony on May 14, 2012 at 20:18 said:

Of the ten books, there are three that stand out as superlative: the two by Rebecca Solnit and Deakin’s Wildwood. These are rich, luminous works I return to repeatedly and find new depths.

Paddy Leigh Fermor’s book is enchanting, with the added historical piquancy of being narrated in the very early days of the Nazis, before their abuses were manifest.

The others are curios, all fascinating in their own very different ways. The Arcades Project is lesser Benjamin, but offers an insight into the flâneur, an archetype I am very drawn to.

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Teju Cole’s Open City.

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Anthony on May 14, 2012 at 20:20 said:

Thanks for commenting and for the suggestion, also made by Isabelle. I’m going to have to do some research and draw up a separate list of walking, thinking fictions.

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This is a great list, and I plan on saving it to add to my list of books to read. What about Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals? She does a prodigious amount of walking in them.

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Anthony on May 16, 2012 at 19:01 said:

Thanks, Rebecca. I’ve been reading extracts of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals here: http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/history/index.asp?pageid=219, they are very enjoyable. I wish I knew better the landscape they address.

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