Bicycle Diaries
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Edition: 1
- Author: David Byrne
- Publisher: Viking Adult
- Release Date: September 2009
- ISBN-10: 0670021148
- ISBN-13: 9780670021147
- List Price: $25.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryA renowned musician and visual artist presents an idiosyncratic behind-thehandlebars view of the world's cities |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Thoughts on culture, globalization, and new ways cities are becoming more bike-friendly
Rating:
BICYCLE DIARIES comes from musician and visual artist David Byrne, who has been riding a bike as his main means of transport in New York City - and who began taking folding bikes around the world when traveling. His observations of his encounters with people around the world include thoughts on culture, globalization, and new ways cities are becoming more bike-friendly, and make this a powerful guide!
Great book
Rating:
I love David Byrne and I love this book. I also ride my bike everywhere and love to travel, so this book is a win-win-win. The chapters are broken down by city so you can randomly choose a chapter to read. He has interesting observations and insights on the culture, architecture, and other aspects of cities that go beyond the random biker's commentary.
STOP MAKING SENSE
Rating:
The travel bits are the funniest. Although David Byrne records bulletins from as far afield as San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Manila and Istanbul among others, you inevitably turn first to your own city to find out what he thinks of it, and here he is on London: "The buildings mostly remain under 10 stories... The windows everywhere, with lots of little panes and mullions, are significantly more enclosing, sheltering and comforting than giant modern picture windows. The little panes hark back to the countryside, to a mythical simple life." Well, that is all very interesting, you think, but then again, might those buildings not just be old?
Nevertheless there is much sense elsewhere, especially on the subject of the search for personal wellbeing and happiness: the wellspring seems to come from within a close community of varied ages and occupations. The automobile is the villain of the piece, crushing communities as well as cyclists under its wheels, and there is much about the history of urban planning and the tips we can take from, among others, the Colombians on how to make our towns more agreeable places in which to live.
Good, but very uneven
Rating:
I wanted to love this book, it touches on issues that are important to me. Cities, bikes, urban planning, travel, other cultures, exotic places. And it's David Byrne, who's pro-urban writings I've read before. But the end result is somewhat disappointing. The book is extremely uneven. Byrne is at his best when he's talking about what is in front of him. Describing the wastelands of Detroit, historic neighborhoods of Manila, the communist architecture of former East Berlin, a blackout in New York. But too often Byrne turns down philosophical and historical alleys where the pieces just dead end. He'll raise a question (often policy related), but then neither explore it in enough depth to be of any use to the reader, or offer any ideas to that specific problem. It's not a policy book, but it surfaces issues but then fails to provide any solutions or answers, or even solid details. It leaves you scratching your head as to what was the point of reading that? It often reads like a blog, poorly edited without continuity. The book is broken into sections by city, but often the content rarely relates to that specific city. The Manila, Sydney, and Berlin chapters would have been better off described as Phillipines, Australia, and Germany. There may only be a page or two on the actual city, followed by long diversions that often seem pointless, with no end or payoff for the reader. Having been to many of the cities Byrne writes about, I yearned for more detail of the built environment, the atmosphere of these places, of the true experience of biking in these places, of what's being done to make them more bike friendly. Instead the reader often gets vaguely unanswered philosophical diversions which just ring empty. The book is somewhat vindicated in the last two chapters and epilogue. The Sydney chapter is truly entertaining when discussing the deadly flora and fauna of the continent. The New York chapter dispenses with the philosophical ramblings and talks about the specifics of bicycling in New York and the efforts to make the city a more bike friendly place. The epilogue should have been the introduction, with a dose of urban planning history (with the usual deserved nods to Jane Jacobs) and some practical information about biking in the city. I enjoyed reading about Byrnes adventures, the characters he meets, the galleries he visits, but too often the book just sags when he heads down these deadend alleys. I would have loved a little more history, a little more of what governments are doing to help cities, a little more observations of the places he visits. It's worth reading, but I was definitely a little disappointed.
Good concept; flawed execution.
Rating:
Contrary to its' title, this book has very little to do with bicycling by David Byrne or anyone else. It's more of a collection of his musings as he visits various cities in the world. If you are one of those people who feel that a celebrity's opinions and political philosophy carry more weight than the rest of us, this book's for you. Good concept; flawed execution.
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