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: 
Interesting musings about life, cities, travel, art business & biking
Rating:
My wife borrowed this book from library; we are both cyclists.
Interesting musings about life, cities, travel, the art business & biking. Byrne is a little all over the place with his insights and some of the details about modern art and the art business became too much. But overall, interesting and enjoyable.
While Byrne's approach to green living and touring is commendable, his primary reason for biking when visiting cities is that this is his desired way of seeing (experiencing) them. All bicyclists know you can notice so many more details about a place when on a bike than in a car or bus. Most of us wouldn't consider the bother of schlepping a fold-up bike via airplane to do so or biking to a business meeting. Lucky for Byrne that he can bike without sweating too much; I am not so lucky so I must wear spandex and shower after.
I wouldn't have the guts to bike some of the places Byrne does, even though I am not afraid to bike into downtown Boston (I can handle jerky drivers, especially if I know where I'm going.)
As following shows, the travel info. sometimes gets extended from the cities the chapters are named for: the Sydney chapter includes details about Byrne's flight into the center of the Australian continent and his driving where the roads are deserted.
Funny scene: Byrne helps an Australian man pull his car from where it was stuck in a ditch with his 4 wheel drive rental car. Then the Australian fool says he wants to drive the car back into the same ditch, as that's the direction he wants to go. Byrne tells the Australian that he's not going to pull his car out again and he won't be back for days and leaves right away.
I recommend this for those who like to read about travel, cities, biking or Byrne. Its a book which can be read over a long period of time as the various chapters do not build upon one another
Will it ever end?...
Rating:
... is what I kept thinking around page fifty of this book. I feel compelled to ask Mr. Byrne what his vehement hatred and disdain for the prior administration has to do with supposed observations made from a bicycle while traversing the globe? I mean really...
Perhaps a more aproppo title for this torturous read would have been: "The Bicycle Bush-Bash Diaries: It's Not About The Bike WHATSOEVER!"
What a waste of a perfect literary premise-a passionate traveller's view of the world via bicycle. Unfortunately, Dave, much like your chosen mode of transport, you both folded AND flatted on this one.
Missed opportunity
Rating:
This book is about how David Bryne used a bike to help him visit various places on his musical tours around the planet. Bryne seems to have few deep feelings for bicycling, and he offers little in the way of insights to the places he visited on his bike. For him, a bike is a means of transportation and that is about it. He could have walked to any of the locations he visited and conveyed the same vapid impressions of those sites. Yes, he has been lots of places and used a bike to expand his horizons, but his writing did little to interest me and he offered nothing but the most shallow of impressions of the places he visited. This book is much overrated. If you are a bike rider, you won't learn anything about how to use that bike to visit new places or even get tips on riding for pleasure. If you are a traveler, you won't gain any new insights to our world. This book is a time sink.
Magnificent Marriage of Right Brain and Left Brain
Rating:
Admiring David since Talking Head days, and identifying with his songs about buildings, food, air, guitars, etc., I was pleased to find a further deep dive into his brain activity. His world is art because he is art. I am art. Bikes are art. If you are an extreme visual person, all your sensual portals have a visual sense to it. I enjoyed this book for that reason. As I was reading, I traveled to the same places and met the same people he did. FUN! Plus, it tickled my natural interest in design and architecture. I like this guy!
Down to earth!
Rating:
This book originates from a blog and consists of collected jottings, many on the urban environment, others on music, yet others of a sociological or philosophical nature.
Rather impressionistic, they provide refreshing views on various cities across the world: Detroit, Berlin, Istanbul, San Francisco, Sydney, London, Manila, New York, etc.
The writing style is rough and unpolished but in full harmony with the contents. The book is illustrated with the author's own black and white photographs.
Though by no means earth-shattering, this work will be of interest to anyone concerned with cities and urban development in general.
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