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emilycc's review against another edition
4.0
A funny, intelligent, sometimes unpleasantly self-involved but ultimately really engaging look at both one guy dealing with ennui of his late twenties/his relationship with his dad and at contemporary pilgrimage in general. Recommend for fans of Dave Eggers, etc.
kcmichelle's review against another edition
1.0
Whiny, self-absorbed guy goes on three pilgrimage trips and ..... whines a lot more.
I read most of this even though I was really sick of the author after the first trip. The goal being some sort of improved insight, I powered on. By the third trip, it was a apparent that there was no change - just more whining and B.S. with his dad that seemed ridiculous. There is a time as an adult when you just need to understand people and stop looking for excuses of how the decisions and actions of others impacts you.
I skipped a bit at the end as the badgering of the dad continued. Maybe this was meaningful to Gideon, but I had no interest in sharing this.
I read most of this even though I was really sick of the author after the first trip. The goal being some sort of improved insight, I powered on. By the third trip, it was a apparent that there was no change - just more whining and B.S. with his dad that seemed ridiculous. There is a time as an adult when you just need to understand people and stop looking for excuses of how the decisions and actions of others impacts you.
I skipped a bit at the end as the badgering of the dad continued. Maybe this was meaningful to Gideon, but I had no interest in sharing this.
heat_her's review against another edition
4.0
I have to admit, reading about Gideon’s pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela made me wish I was the kind of person who’s tough enough to go on a pilgrimage. However, I would probably want to quit after the first day or two, so I enjoyed going on Gideon’s pilgrimages from the comfort of my couch. I’ve said it here before, and I’ll say it again: I love nature, but from a distance. So I really enjoyed reading about Gideon’s experiences during all three of his pilgrimages, and although he got on my nerves a few times by being whiny and selfish, I liked a lot of the insight his travels produced. And let’s be honest, who wouldn’t get a little whiny and selfish while spending a month walking almost 600 miles across Spain or almost 800 miles around an island in Japan?
Read my review in full on Between the Covers...
Read my review in full on Between the Covers...
sparrowhank's review
4.0
More like 4.5 stars but alas Goodreads doesn’t allow it. Great read from start to finish, loved it even when the author bored me with his personal issues. Loved the account of the loneliness of a long walk without company.
xmooniex's review
3.0
I would have enjoyed it more without the increasingly religious undertones at the end. I am not talking about the religious details of the section set at Uman; all of Gideon's pilgrimages were ostensibly religious in nature, and generally tackled from a secular point of view. When he reached the end of the section about Uman, however, Gideon started talking in a more spiritual way, which kind of threw me off. I wouldn't go so far as to say it felt like a betrayal, but it was offputting for me, as an atheist and as someone who had thoroughly enjoyed the kinds of secular observations he made on his first two pilgrimages.
maria_ruth_jones's review
4.0
Smartly written; at once frustrating and endearing - but frustrating in how very close it hits to home, drawn-out conversations over long walks about finding a sense of meaning in life. There's at one point an ironic reference to Eat, Pray, Love, and it stuck in my mind - it does feel like somehow the hipster version of that. A note that I absorbed this in small doses over a couple of months, by audiobook, often while walking - I don't think it would be the sort of book I'd want to sit down and read in one sitting at all. It did leave me very much wanting to embark on a pilgrimage myself!
hcastle's review
4.0
There is something about Gideon Lewis-Kraus that makes you want to stick with him. Perhaps it is because the first half of this book is so pleasurable - his time in Berlin and his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with his friend Tom. Gideon's circuit around the Japanese island of Shikoku should have been intriguing, but as he admits the walk is not so much lonely as boring. It involves many days of walking on asphalt with only an occasional exchange with a Japanese pensioner. His third and final journey with his brother and father to a Ukrainian Hassidic tomb during Rosh Hashanah should have been a revelation. Offering the opportunity for Gideon to reconcile himself with his Rabbi father, who had deserted his family and responsibilities for a new gay life with his partner. In the end, his father does not quite proffer up the insights or apologies that his sons hoped for. The book ends with too long a passage dissecting his relationship with his father. Gideon is a good writer, who just needs a good editor.
lmessy's review against another edition
2.0
Objectively, a beautifully written book. But Gideon couldn't make me care about his life, his troubles, or his friends. At times it felt like he was really trying to connect with the reader, making statements that were meant to be relatable, but he missed the mark with me.
expendablemudge's review against another edition
4.0
Rating: 3.8* of five
The Book Description: In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone.
Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles - the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine - he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is - and find a way forward, with purpose?
My Review: Another year-old LibraryThing Early Reviewers win, what the hell happened to me last year? Did I have a stroke and forget stuff? Damn. I hate that I didn't write these reviews on time.
This is a book by a David Foster Wallace-readin' straight twentysomething son of a gay father whose selfish and self-absorbed life erupts after he goes on the Sacred Road pilgrimage in Spain. He then goes on a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan...alone...speaking no Japanese. What could go wrong? ::eyeroll:: And then, after Pilgrimania has fully gripped him, his pop and he (plus an ignorable sibling) go on some Hasidic hoo-rah that really sets the ducks in the shootin' gallery.
Target rich environment! Set phasers on devastate, Mr. Sulu, we're gonna skewer this kid!!
And, well, maybe I could and perhaps I should, but for all the whingeing whiney crap, the kid writes from whatever soul he has and he is honest. Sometimes to a fault. I get it, I get it, Dad coming out when you were at a delicate age had some troublesome aspects for you. But despite the fact that we dwell in Gideon's overprivileged head, we do so with a very witty host. He makes funny lines, but you know something weird? They aren't funny outside the book. Can't quote 'em. He's good for a grin, though.
I enjoyed reading this book, and I think it will be a good first book for his CV. Don't sprain anything running out to get one.
The Book Description: In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone.
Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles - the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine - he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is - and find a way forward, with purpose?
My Review: Another year-old LibraryThing Early Reviewers win, what the hell happened to me last year? Did I have a stroke and forget stuff? Damn. I hate that I didn't write these reviews on time.
This is a book by a David Foster Wallace-readin' straight twentysomething son of a gay father whose selfish and self-absorbed life erupts after he goes on the Sacred Road pilgrimage in Spain. He then goes on a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan...alone...speaking no Japanese. What could go wrong? ::eyeroll:: And then, after Pilgrimania has fully gripped him, his pop and he (plus an ignorable sibling) go on some Hasidic hoo-rah that really sets the ducks in the shootin' gallery.
Target rich environment! Set phasers on devastate, Mr. Sulu, we're gonna skewer this kid!!
And, well, maybe I could and perhaps I should, but for all the whingeing whiney crap, the kid writes from whatever soul he has and he is honest. Sometimes to a fault. I get it, I get it, Dad coming out when you were at a delicate age had some troublesome aspects for you. But despite the fact that we dwell in Gideon's overprivileged head, we do so with a very witty host. He makes funny lines, but you know something weird? They aren't funny outside the book. Can't quote 'em. He's good for a grin, though.
I enjoyed reading this book, and I think it will be a good first book for his CV. Don't sprain anything running out to get one.