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Robert Macfarlane

Landmarks (Landscapes) Paperback – August 2, 2016

by Robert Macfarlane (Author)

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From Robert Macfarlane, the acclaimed author of The Old Ways and Underland—a celebration of the language of landscape and the power of words to shape our sense of place

For years now, the British writer Robert Macfarlane has been collecting place-words: terms for aspects of landscape, nature, and weather, drawn from dozens of languages and dialects of the British Isles. In this, his fifth book, Macfarlane brilliantly explores the linguistic and literary terrain of the British archipelago, from the Shetlands to Cornwall and from Cumbria to Suffolk, offering themed glossaries of hundreds of these rare, deeply local, poetical terms, organized by such geographical terrains as flatlands, uplands, waterlands, coastlands, woodlands, and underlands. Interspersed with this archive of place words are biographical essays in which Macfarlane writes of his favorite authors who have paid close attention to the natural world and who embody in their own work the huge richness of place language—from Barry Lopez and John Muir to Nan Shepard, J. A. Baker, and Roger Deakin. Landmarks is a book about the power of language and how it can become a way to know and love landscape, from a writer acclaimed for his own precision of utterance and distinctive, lyrical voice.

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

August 2, 2016
Dimensions

7.7 x 5 x 1.2 inches
ISBN-10

0241967872
ISBN-13

978-0241967874
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise from America and England for Landmarks

"Landmarks is wildly ambitious, part outdoor adventure story, part literary criticism, part philosophical disquisition, part linquistic excavation project, part mash note. . . It's an argument for sitting down with a book; it's also an argument for going outside and paying attention."
– The New York Times

"[A] magnificent meditation on the words we have for describing the natural world. . . [Macfarlane] is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation.”
- Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal

“Simply one of the best nature history books I have read in years, Landmarks is a stunning paean to the beauty of language, the craft of writing and the power of nature. It is truly a book that will force you to rethink your relationship to the world around you.”
– The Seattle Times

“[A] fascinating, poetic compilation of vocabulary invented to describe the natural world. . .Lucent, lyrical prose evokes Macfarlane’s aesthetic, ethical, and powerfully tactile response to nature’s enchantments.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“Macfarlane’s beautifully written blend of nature writing and lexicon connects the work of his favorite writers to the British Isles’ natural settings and the distinctive, lyrical vocabulary used to describe them. . .[An] exceptional compilation.”
– Publishers Weekly

“This joyous meditation on land and language is a love letter to the British Isles.”
- Observer

“Lyrical, charged with a monumental strength. Surely no one since the young Ted Hughes has written about British landscape and wildlife with such fierce enthusiasm. Few writers today have such power to make you look afresh at the familiar . . . making a British countryside come alive as the most exotic place on earth.”
- Daily Express

“Astonishing and revelatory. Please read Landmarks, encounter its wonderful words, let them open your mind . . . start looking at the world in the dazzlingly receptive way they have taught you.”
- Adam Nicolson, Spectator

“As teeming and complex as an ecosystem, rawly moving, enormously pleasurable, historically important and imaginatively compelling, elegant and scholarly.”
- Melissa Harrison, Financial Times

“Passionate and magical...A deep scholarship of the countryside with an adventurous approach, all rendered in immaculate, delicious prose. Macfarlane offers an enriched nature. A kind of manual of how people in love with place and language are created by landscape.”
- Horatio Clare, Daily Telegraph

“So important, enriching. Ought to be read by policymakers, educators, armchair environmentalists and active conservationists the world over.”
- John Burnside, Guardian

About the Author

Robert Macfarlane is the author of a prizewinning quartet of books about landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, and Landmarks. He has contributed to Harper’s, Granta, The New Yorker, the Observer (London), the Times Literary Supplement (London), and the London Review of Books. He is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (August 2, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241967872
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241967874
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.7 x 5 x 1.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #261,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #91 in Ecotourism Travel Guides
- #319 in Nature Writing & Essays
- #430 in Travel Writing Reference

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Robert Macfarlane

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Robert Macfarlane is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books about landscape, nature, people and place, including Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003), The Wild Places (2007), The Old Ways (2012), Holloway (2013, with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards), Landmarks (2015), The Lost Words: A Spell Book (with the artist Jackie Morris, 2017) and Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019). His work has been translated into many languages, won prizes around the world, and his books have been widely adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He has collaborated with artists, film-makers, actors, photographers and musicians, including Hauschka, Willem Dafoe, Karine Polwart and Stanley Donwood. In 2017 he was awarded the EM Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

704 global ratings

5 star		79%
4 star		14%
3 star		5%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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M. Heiss

Disenchantment is the distinctive injury of modernity

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Find enchantment

The lists and glossaries are captivating - as a study in cognitive linguistics, this book rocks.

As a series of biographies of land-wise people, it is fair.

As a treatment of the philosophy of place-love, I get it. I got tired of the troubled souls and the people-hatred by the middle of the book. (Aren’t humans part of nature? Aren’t their constructed habitats natural?) But the glossaries kept me reading to the end.

Some notes:

On optical illusions: our habitual vision is not the only correct perception (68)

A tree is a river of sap (105)

On moving and seeing (237)

On being north-minded (220)

Wonder is an essential survival skill (238)

Emerson: language is a city to the building of which every person has brought a stone (342)

The smell of rain on stone = petrichor (348)

This book rehabilitates the word “parochial.” In a good way.

14 people found this helpful

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Northern Wanderer

There is more than one way to climb a mountain

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is a magical book. It is both a collection of landscape words from the British Isles and a meditation on writing, mountains and landscapes. It is not a quick read but something that satiates after a few pages, requiring digestion, or rereading. The place words are from a vanishing time when we knew our land like we now know how to get about town. The words shimmer with beauty even though I suspect I am making a poor job of the Gaelic pronunciations.

I thought I was a pretty good writer but reading this is humbling in a happy way, taking pleasure in his writing and glad that there are people who can write like this.

If you love nature, if you love words, if you think there is more than one way to climb a mountain (p. 63), this is a book that will give you pleasure.

93 people found this helpful

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macc

Another fascinating topic from Robert MacFarlane

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 9, 2016

Verified Purchase

This is a very interesting approach to nature and to language. Anything that R. Macfarlane writes is going to make me think, and probably point me in the direction of several other books to add to my list. After only 2 or 3 chapters of this book, I already have 2 other books to find and read. I wasn't sure what to expect. Much of this is about other writers and their approach to nature and outdoors. Each chapter has a lengthy glossary, probably 70% of which contains words new to me. The book is definitely British-centric, but don't let that put you off. Rather, let it start you on an exploration of how regional writers in the US relate to and reflect their chosen environments.

29 people found this helpful

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SaraBeing

Beautiful but probably better in print.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is a luscious book! It helps you to return to sensual living in relationship to nature. I gave it one demerit for format. The clickable footnotes and references eject one straight to the bibliography, which is not a tidy one. The resulting need for direction and the intellectual search toss one out of the euphoric and into the mildly anxious. Time to buy the actual book.

11 people found this helpful

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Kate Johnston

Full of magic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 22, 2018

Verified Purchase

I'm in love with this book. The minute I received it, I began highlighting words that resonated with me, that felt like magic. Many of these words conjure another world for me--it's hard to explain. But anytime I'm in need of some inspiration, I open this book and just flip to a random page. I'm always pleasantly surprised at what I find. I'm so glad the author compiled these words into a single volume where I can keep it within arm's reach. Which is practically every day.

3 people found this helpful

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Heather K

Just the thing.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 22, 2020

Verified Purchase

Purchased as a gift. Receiver was in happy tears when he opened it. He loves words and so this was just the thing. It is a lovely book for anyone that enjoys learning.

Helpful

B. Groene

I was unaware this is entirely about the UK

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 19, 2019

Verified Purchase

I love language and beautiful words, and was very eager to get this book. But I was NOT aware the book is about landscapes words ONLY for the UK: I am an American and have never been to the UK. Since I am unfamiliar with many of the types of landscape there (moors? peat bogs? etc) and had absolutely NO IDEA how to pronounce most of the words, it felt very alien to me, and left zero emotional impact. I found several lovely ideas, and wish I was familiar with the types of landscapes in this book. Sadly, I gave up after the 4th chapter. Will be donating this to the library.

7 people found this helpful

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joanne Barber

Exceptional and one-of-a kind

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2019

Verified Purchase

The vocabulary list the author has compiled is exceptional. He has delved into our loss of specific expression and identification words and pulled them out of obscurity: words that that are largely no longer in use in this age of erasable text messages and instagrams. It's a gem for writers and lovers of nature.

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Top reviews from other countries

R. E. Bentley

If you like words, nature and the Great Outdoors you'll enjoy ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

If you like words, nature and the Great Outdoors you'll enjoy this little gem.
MacFarlane unearths all sorts of words for different natural occurrences and introduces us to some of his favourite nature writers.
He rails against the loss of nature vocabulary to the point where the mainstream has been left with dull generic terms like field, hedge, wood, hill etc.
There is a rich body of words out there from sailors, farmers, shepherds, trekkers and country folk and Macfarlane's aim is to document these before they are lost forever.
One of the words I've taken from it is 'smeuse' - a Sussex term for a small worn away tunnel or entrance in a hedge caused by a creature going back and forth.
MacFarlane makes the point that by giving things a name we are more likely to notice them, look out for them - meaning the way we experience nature is enhanced.
A truly enjoyable, life-affirming work

64 people found this helpful

Amazonian Customer

Nature writing about nature writing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

Landmarks is not so much a book of nature writing as a book about nature writing. For me, the chapters about the writing of Nan Shepherd and Roger Deakin were the most interesting - two writers I have long since meant to try but haven't got round to yet. In between the chapters are glossaries of nature words. These are interesting to dip in and out of, but they are heavily weighted in favour of languages that most of us would avoid attempting to pronounce, such as Gaelic, so I'm not likely to be using many of them soon!
Robert MacFarlane is a passionate and interesting author, his writing soars and is always a joy to read.

9 people found this helpful

Cameron Cullen

Interesting idea but a random collection of folklore

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

Hard to pin down what makes this book special. It has an excellent cover, good reviews, and an easy style. On the debit side is the distance between the author's friends and their experiences, and those brought up from earlier writing. It read like part academic essay, part anecdote, and part dictionary. It might dazzle many, but it leaves out modern local comparison of folklore. It might be an enjoyable book to read when travelling or on holiday, though not something you would gravitate to as evening reading. The sum total is it's not enough in places and too much in others.

5 people found this helpful

Jill Hudson

Simply beautiful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

Occasionally one comes across a book which is simply and utterly beautiful. It doesn't happen often; and even more rarely when the book is non-fiction. But this book is special. It is somehow nostalgic without being depressing, uplifting without being pretentious. As a celebration of all that is to be cherished in our landscape and our linguistic heritage it is without parallel. Highly recommended.

26 people found this helpful

E A M Harris

Full of fascinating facts and ideas

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a book about words and the cultures they belong to. The main feature is a set of glossaries of countryside names, in British languages and dialects as well as some technical and poetical terms. Whether knowing the Gaelic for a gap in a hedge or the Herefordshire word for a flood is actually useful is debatable, but I found it very interesting.
Between the glossaries are essays on the works of other outdoors writers, most of whom Mr MacFarlane seems to have known. Part memoir and part book review, these are of varying interest but readable and beautifully written.
I recommend to all who love words and the countryside.

16 people found this helpful

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