cryptoclastic's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
lookhome's review against another edition
4.0
Olga Tokarczuk's Flights could eventually be touted as the precursor to The Post-Internet Novel. It is an awe-inspiring cycle of anecdotes, short stories and non-fiction bits and tidbits.
Much like the internet, Flights is is made up of various interconnected fragments, both Fictional and Non-Fictional, and a profound meditation on time and space and the human desire to interact with its environment. As a result, it explores, in a distinctly non-linear way, strange and unique encounters with both the modern and natural world.
Tokarczuk's approach is thematic and scattershot, but never heavy-handed.
The novel unfolds as though someone were looking through an old photo album and its various witnesses each made comments and connections, touching on previous statements as the book is poured over.
Possibly, it is a novel best understood as the embodiment of the sensation one gets from clicking various connecting links in a Wikipedia page. Everything is loosely connected and yet oddly purposeful. All is an expansion. The mention of certain words, or colours, places and dates all take on a new meaning within the provided context.
Though the last 100 pages cover ground discussed at length within the first 300, overall it is a novel to be read and re-read.
Strongly recommended.
Quotes: (library book meaning I didn't highlight while reading)
"only what is different will survive'"
"I had a name for what was wrong with me; it was like discovering my own secret name, the name that summons one to an initiation"
If you like Flights, you'll probably like:
-The Book Of Disquiet by Pessoa
-The White Book by Han Kang
-Known And Strange Things by Teju Cole
-Any and all non-fiction work by John Berger
Much like the internet, Flights is is made up of various interconnected fragments, both Fictional and Non-Fictional, and a profound meditation on time and space and the human desire to interact with its environment. As a result, it explores, in a distinctly non-linear way, strange and unique encounters with both the modern and natural world.
Tokarczuk's approach is thematic and scattershot, but never heavy-handed.
The novel unfolds as though someone were looking through an old photo album and its various witnesses each made comments and connections, touching on previous statements as the book is poured over.
Possibly, it is a novel best understood as the embodiment of the sensation one gets from clicking various connecting links in a Wikipedia page. Everything is loosely connected and yet oddly purposeful. All is an expansion. The mention of certain words, or colours, places and dates all take on a new meaning within the provided context.
Though the last 100 pages cover ground discussed at length within the first 300, overall it is a novel to be read and re-read.
Strongly recommended.
Quotes: (library book meaning I didn't highlight while reading)
"only what is different will survive'"
"I had a name for what was wrong with me; it was like discovering my own secret name, the name that summons one to an initiation"
If you like Flights, you'll probably like:
-The Book Of Disquiet by Pessoa
-The White Book by Han Kang
-Known And Strange Things by Teju Cole
-Any and all non-fiction work by John Berger
unidentifiedgemstone's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I would have preferred more travel talk, less anatomy. Sometimes boring, sometimes beautiful, always compassionate, measured, and profound.
alessajill's review against another edition
Did not finish. It’s not that I hated it - the writing is good, the theme of travel is appealing to me, but it’s just not that interesting. I never want to sit down to read it. I made it about halfway and I’m giving up and moving on. (I LOVED her other novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, this one is very different).
Edited to add that I picked this back up. I skimmed the middle, but read the last quarter and gradually did find it more engaging. Still not sure I would wholeheartedly recommend it, but I’m glad I (mostly) read it.
Edited to add that I picked this back up. I skimmed the middle, but read the last quarter and gradually did find it more engaging. Still not sure I would wholeheartedly recommend it, but I’m glad I (mostly) read it.
rebekah_nobody's review against another edition
3.0
“[T]o someone from nowhere, every movement turns into a return”
The only upside to our Bad Flight Itinerary of August 2019 was experiencing this book in its natural habitat. ReviewReader, if you continue you will be exposed to an account of said itinerary, and I know if it was me, but not my review, I would appreciate the warning and stop here.
Book selected the morning we left Tokyo, continued in spurts during takeoffs, landings and the in-air-lecture-time when airplane attendants try to guilt me into believing I am a bad mother for refusing food trays for myself and my sons.
Later, in the snaking midnight lines of Manila with a whiny young American couple behind us (excuse me, ma’am, sir, we need to jump to the front because our flight is scheduled to leave soon…), quotes fresh from the book replayed in my head.
When the same couple was next to us on our flight to Beijing, the girl took a hiatus from their make-out session to remark on my existence with pity, Look, Dyson, that poor woman with the kids was in the same line we were!
I understood her unspoken epiphany (I thought inching forward for hours was my personal tragedy, but apparently I shared it with preteen kids possessing more stamina than me) and clinked tiny half-cans of Heineken with her.
Arriving in Beijing, 5am, we stumbled around looking for our short-term lodging and openly presented our visages to street cameras, exercising and, I like to think, improving their facial recognition technology. My face is triangular but, importantly, still human.
Finished the book the next day on a slow train, riding instead of flying to the rural spot in Henan we for a short time called “home.”
—
Strange to think of traveling anywhere now, sitting homebound in my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, May 6, 2020.
The only upside to our Bad Flight Itinerary of August 2019 was experiencing this book in its natural habitat. ReviewReader, if you continue you will be exposed to an account of said itinerary, and I know if it was me, but not my review, I would appreciate the warning and stop here.
Book selected the morning we left Tokyo, continued in spurts during takeoffs, landings and the in-air-lecture-time when airplane attendants try to guilt me into believing I am a bad mother for refusing food trays for myself and my sons.
Later, in the snaking midnight lines of Manila with a whiny young American couple behind us (excuse me, ma’am, sir, we need to jump to the front because our flight is scheduled to leave soon…), quotes fresh from the book replayed in my head.
When the same couple was next to us on our flight to Beijing, the girl took a hiatus from their make-out session to remark on my existence with pity, Look, Dyson, that poor woman with the kids was in the same line we were!
I understood her unspoken epiphany (I thought inching forward for hours was my personal tragedy, but apparently I shared it with preteen kids possessing more stamina than me) and clinked tiny half-cans of Heineken with her.
Arriving in Beijing, 5am, we stumbled around looking for our short-term lodging and openly presented our visages to street cameras, exercising and, I like to think, improving their facial recognition technology. My face is triangular but, importantly, still human.
Finished the book the next day on a slow train, riding instead of flying to the rural spot in Henan we for a short time called “home.”
—
Strange to think of traveling anywhere now, sitting homebound in my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, May 6, 2020.
bg_oseman_fan's review
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I like that this collection of short stories had a wide range of topics. however, several them felt a tad to long and unfocused. it was a struggle at times to get through them. i liked the juxtaposition of stories of travel with stories about taxidermies and dissections. my favorite story was the one about Chopin’s sister. if the stories had all been like that one, it would have been five stars for sure
urgalro's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
tativv's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
gettyhesse's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
sambodamer's review against another edition
4.0
This was my first read by Olga Tokarczuk, inspired by her recent profile in the New Yorker.
I read it keeping in mind the Polish title- Bieguni. The bieguni, or wanderers, are an obscure and possibly fictional Slavic sect who have rejected settled life for an existence of constant movement, in the tradition of the travelling yogi, wandering dervishes or itinerant Buddhist monks who survive on the kindness of strangers.
This book takes you everywhere. Fragments of fiction, non-fiction, anatomy lessons, and drawings of maps keep the reader on the move. It’s a masterpiece in fragmentary storytelling. Between the hearts, travel psychologists, stomaches, islands, airports, fetuses preserved in jars, stuffed bodies in basements and cabinets of curiosities- the moral of the story is to move. Go. Keep going.
I read it keeping in mind the Polish title- Bieguni. The bieguni, or wanderers, are an obscure and possibly fictional Slavic sect who have rejected settled life for an existence of constant movement, in the tradition of the travelling yogi, wandering dervishes or itinerant Buddhist monks who survive on the kindness of strangers.
This book takes you everywhere. Fragments of fiction, non-fiction, anatomy lessons, and drawings of maps keep the reader on the move. It’s a masterpiece in fragmentary storytelling. Between the hearts, travel psychologists, stomaches, islands, airports, fetuses preserved in jars, stuffed bodies in basements and cabinets of curiosities- the moral of the story is to move. Go. Keep going.