Walking Home, Simon Armitage

A refreshing one this. Simon Armitage is from Marsden, one of the stops on the Pennine Way. He sets out to walk the Pennine Way backwards (as in the opposite way round to the way most people do it). Walking from Kirk Yetholm towards his home town. He travels as 'a modern troubadour' setting off with the rail fare to Scotland and no more. He stays with strangers and gives poetry readings each evening for donations.

It is such a good read. Armitage is engaging, funny and honest. The book is full of the stories of the people he walks with, those who put him up at night and musings (or just generalisations based on stereotypes depending on his mood) on those he passes on the way. The writing is poetic in the way he chats, wonders and describes the walk. Im parts you can feel the rising panic of being lost in the mist and rain, or that weathered, rosy cheeked feeling of someone who has come in from a day on the tops in good weather.

My parents and their families are all from Huddersfield (im from just next door in Wakefield). Which meant I felt like I could relate to Armitage, I could see in my head the places he was, and feel his surprise at seeing Emley Moor mast from Malham Cove. The point though is that Simon Armitage writes so well, with an immediacy, that I think you'll get that feeling even if you've never been anywhere near anywhere.

Armitage notes that 'the Pennine Way is a pointless exercise, leading from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular via no particular route, for no particular reason' but if you go along with Mr Armitage you will get stories and thinkings and snippets and giggles and lost, and its great fun (especially curled up warm and dry in bed with tea).

Thank you very much Faber and Faber for the proof.

Im a couple of chapters in to In One Person by John Irving. Its very 'John Irving', if you know what I mean, so far. Im looking forward to being in the thick of it. 

The 32 Stops, Danny Dorling

This is one of Penguin's Underground Lines books. Dorling follows the Central Line one Saturday, telling us of the social and economic state of the people who live around each of the tube stops.

Sounds dry I know, but Dorling conjures a portrait of a cross section of London. At each stop there is the textual equivalent of a photograph of someone who lives nearby. A surgeon out to lunch with a younger female colleague. An old woman in a home thinking she would just like a change of company every now and then. A homeless woman who used to beg outside St Paul's Cathedral. These images are compelling and so the work is never boring. I'm not entirely sure weather or not the stories are true. I can't figure out how they could be but its implied that they are.

All in all its a good read, really nice length and I think does what the series set out to do, it is a celebration of London and the tube but doesn't romanticise it, a collection of engaging and well written information. Thanks so much for the proof Penguin!

Just cracked the spine of Simon Armitage's Walking Home. Im looking forward to this one, I like Armitage (seen him presenting a few things) but never read much of his work. This one looks interesting. He is walking the Pennine Way 'backwards', ending up in his hometown of Marsden, which is very near where my Mum, Dad and Grandparents are from.