Landmarks

by Robert Macfarlane

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015

Landmarks is Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two.

Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.

Praise for Robert Macfarlane:

'He has a poet's eye and a prose style that will make many a novelist burn with envy' John Banville, Observer

"I'll read anything Macfarlane writes" David Mitchell, Independent

'Every movement needs stars. In [Macfarlane] we surely have one, burning brighter with each book.' Telegraph '[Macfarlane] is a godfather of a cultural moment' Sunday Times

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Travel, Language, History, Environment, Essays

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2015

About the author

Robert Macfarlane is a British nature writer and literary critic.

Educated at Nottingham High School, Pembroke College, Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford, he is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge.

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.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely purchase books. I don't have the budget or the space; I'm not a collector of things. But every rare once in a while I come across a book so lovely and profound, one that speaks directly to the writer and poet in me, I know it is one I must have one my shelves. Landmarks is just such a book.

A collection of essays and reflections on place as well as a series of glossaries of geography, geology, topography, weather and all other possible aspects of the natural world, Landmarks is a gorgeous reminder of what it means to breathe and exist completely in the world, the ineffability of the seasons, the immensity of nature, the healing and generous gift of open space.

The wordsmith in me is completely enamored of Robert Macfarlane's ode to language and land. The language of place. His desire, by naming all the things, by refusing to lose the myriad ways cultures have sought to identify the natural phenomena that surrounds them, is to "sing the world back into being." No more noble pursuit, with our natural world in such a state of crisis. We need more voices raised in Earth's song.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review of this just went up in the current issue of The Southeast Review! Such a gorgeous book: http://southeastreview.org/volume-34-1/

***
Originally landed on my list thanks to one of the most beautiful articles I've read in a long time: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

[Hugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderful if idiosyncratic book on the language of landscape and nature.

Part of the book is a glossary of dialect, regional, slang, jargon and new coinages, organised by subject. These glossaries are lists of words and places where they are in use - linguists may note that the sources are rather selective.

The glossary sections are interspersed with essays that explain how this information was collected, and explore the worlds of some of Macfarlane's favourite nature writers - there is also a fascinating section on young children, their childish language and their experiences of nature. Some of this material (notably the chapters on Nan Shepherd and Roger Deakin) will seem familiar to those who have read Macfarlane's previous books.

This paperback edition also contains a new appendix describing and listing some additions sent by readers of the original hardback.

[Carolyn Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Books, like landscapes, leave their marks in us. Certain books, though, like certain landscapes, stay with us even when we left them, changing not just our weathers but our climates." - Robert Macfarlane
🌿
Few words can express how ardently I love these words! They are the magnificent words of the brilliant Robert Macfarlane!
Instead of spluttering my own lackluster praises, I'll let his words speak for themselves, and my oh my do they sing!
🍃
"Before you become a writer you must first become a reader. Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write..."
🌳
"Words act as compass; place-speech serves literally to en-chant the land – to sing it back into being, and to sing one’s being back into it."
💚
"...these words: migrant birds, arriving from distant places with story and metaphor caught in their feathers..."
🌱
"Without a name made in our mouths, an animal or a place struggles to find purchase in our minds or our hearts."
🌿
Thank you Robert Macfarlane, for giving the world your voice!

[Emma Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Amazing. What a lovely book, and one I will return to again and again. I must buy a dead tree copy to keep with my other reference books, for the numerous lists of terms relating to the landscape. And how beautiful that it concluded with children's experience of the land. Magical throughout.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to clearly categorise. It is a book about the natural world, about language to describe that natural world, but is also about the writers and in some cases friends, that he has learnt so much from in his journeys around the UK, up mountains and on long walks.

As he writes about those authors, Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin, Richard Mabey and Richard Skelton, seminal writers that have provided so much influence, through their work and books, it comes across that this is as much about his formative years and the sense of wonder that nature has given him. Woven into their eulogies, are accounts of journeys taken to favourite places, icy cold lochs swum in, and natural and literary discoveries.

But it is also a call to arms. Part of this was prompted by the Oxford Junior Dictionary dropping certain words like acorn, mistletoe and kingfisher. These were removed as children no longer hear or feel or see these things; the replacements MP3, Blackberry and tablet, and objects that are used inside and alone. MacFarlane wants them to bring these words back in to normal use, by getting children to discover them for themselves, and use them in their own ways as they explore the landscape and their imaginations equally.

But more importantly, this is a reference, not complete, of local words to describe what people have been seeing around themselves for hundreds of years. There are words for places, water, weather, woods, rocks and animals. Drawn from all parts of the UK, Ireland and Jersey, some of these are familiar and others are brand new to me. They range from the brutally blunt, like 'turdstall' which means a substantial cowpat to 'huffling' which means sudden gust of wind. These lists punctuate the book, giving breathing spaces between the chapters, so you are not faced with the enormity of a huge list.

MacFarlane is one of my favourite writers, his poetic prose and keen observation skills mean that the mundane can become the interesting, and the beautiful the breathtaking. It is different to his other books, but it is equally significant. If you have a moment, take some time to read this and immerse yourself in the evocative language he has sown you on the other side of the hedge.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This new classic of nature writing zeroes in on the language we use to talk about our environment, both individual words – which Macfarlane celebrates in nine mini-glossaries alternating with the prose chapters – and the narratives we build around places, via discussions of the work of nature writers he admires, including John Muir, Barry Lopez, Nan Shepherd, J.A. Baker, and Roger Deakin (a personal friend for whom he served as literary executor).

The book is divided into rough geological categories: mountains, woodlands, coasts, and so on. For each landscape, he chooses a patron saint whose written works have influenced how he relates to it. To start with I was unsure the glossary sections belonged, but I came around to them. They are like rests in a piece of music. Whether poetic (“heavengravel,” Gerard Manley Hopkins’s term for hailstones), local and folksy (“wonty-tump,” a Herefordshire word for a molehill), or onomatopoeic (on Exmoor, “zwer” is the sound of partridges taking off), these vocabulary words are a treasure trove.

[Victoria (Eve's Alexandria) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took incredible pleasure in this book and it’s exploration of the relationship between words, place and the natural world. Macfarlane introduced me to many writers that I didn’t know, and reminded me of many works of nature writing that I have loved. It’s my first book by him but I shall be devouring his back catalogue.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Words act as compass; place-speech serves literally to en-chant the land – to sing it back into being, and to sing one’s being back into it.

This is a gateway to further authors as well as a compendium, a glossary of local terms for specific geographical/natural instances. I appreciate the erudition, the compilation but the task cannot bridge the mysterious divide between us and It. I expected the references to Muir and Lopez but not the ones to Merleau-Ponty and indirectly to Heidegger.

In modernity, mastery usurped mystery.

I appreciate nature and being lost in such, in all possible senses. I still feel I lack the argot to ingratiate the locals, however much coin I have at my disposal. I bought a half dozen books cited within while reading this and look forward to further exploration.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And our children's vanishing encounters with nature represent a loss of primary experience."
- Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks

"If children abandon 'the sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands', if 'children are not permitted...to be adventurers and explorers as children', then 'what will become of the world of adventure, stories, of literature itself?'"
- Michael Chabon, The Wilderness of Childhood

"I was reminded, too, of Emerson's beautiful description of language as 'a city to the building of which every person has brought a stone.'"
- Emerson, quoted by Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks



Inspired by the removal of several nature words in the Oxford Junior Dictionary: "acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup..." The list was tragic. The thesis of Robert Macfarlane's book is we love the things we name, and if we lose the name for things in our language, our ability to care for nature and wilderness diminished. This book is a signpost pointing to books where the language of nature is strong. Chapters are essentially essays where Robert Macfarlane is able to sing a love letter to fantastic books like Nan Shepherd's In the Cairngorms, Roger Deakon's Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, Richard Skelton's Landings, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, Richard Jefferies' Nature Near London, Clarince Ellis's The Pebbles On The Beach, and John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra.

Macfarlane's love for these books and topics is so rich it is hard to not love them back. I finished this book and purchased three more. It was infective. Just like the glossaries that divide the chapters. In the glossary, Macfarlane include nature words in danger of being lost. The words mostly are focused on Great Britain, but when this book was first published it inspired readers to send in their own local lexicons of nature. It really is beautifully constructed and for a book organic, which structurally is nearly perfect.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book consists of chapters that focus on authors of nature writing. Both the authors’ books and their lives are reviewed. Interspersed between these chapters are glossary list of terms used to describe nature, land, water and weather. These words are Gaelic, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Breton, English and Old English. The meaning and origin of each word is given. The words in the glossary lists are only loosely related to the subject of the previous chapter.

I have purchased both the beautiful hardcover and the audiobook. I will not remember all the words in the glossary lists. By having the hardcover I will be able to return to the lists for future reference. Having the audiobook allows the reader to hear the correct pronunciation of the glossary words, many of which are Gaelic and thus difficult to accurately pronounce.

It took me quite a while to figure out how the text chapters were related to the glossary lists. The organization is unclear! The lists are grouped by terrain type. The words in the lists are in fact not mentioned in the preceding chapter. The glossary lists are read in the audiobook. While the words themselves are marvelous, it is difficult to listen to / read word after word. The words in the lists are not in alphabetical order. Searching for a particular word is difficult.

Macfarlane is a poet and has a poet's sensibility. The books and authors referred to tie in with the central thesis that language and nature are intertwined, to appreciate one you need the other. Words are being lost. In loosing these words, we lessen our perception of and appreciation of nature. The book helps to remedy this loss of words.

I have appreciated this book both for its central thesis, for the reference glossary lists (containing about 2000 words) and as a valuable source of other books on nature writing.

There is an index, source notes and a bibliography. The cover is gorgeous.

The audiobook narration by Roy McMillan was good, although sometimes I could not clearly hear the glossary words. The prononciation and intonation is British, not American!

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't go beyond Macfarlane's own words to say what his most recent book is about: 'the power of language - strong style, single words - to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to literature I love, and it is a word-hoard of the astonishing lexis for landscape that exists in the compression of islands, rivers, strands, fells, lochs, cities, tons, carries, hedgerows, fields and edge lands uneasily known as the British Isles'.
Each chapter revolves around one world and one or two writers. Each is followed by a Glossary of connected words, arranged into subcategories and indexed by a creative and thorough indexer. I love his use of the term 'word hoard', for words of and from the land are the treasure he seeks himself and which have been shared with him by other passionate observers and listeners.
Throughout the book we hear the importance of understanding the local; 'the idea that we learn by scrutiny of the close-at-hand'; that rich perception comes from close observation. The glossaries themselves reflect this close observation of local environments and how they affect life. Any page opening in any glossary will produce something like amod (Gaelic) a free plain almost encircled by the bend of a river, or wetchered (Lincolnshire) wet through after being caught out in the rain.
I particularly like some of the words for Ways of Walking - hippit (Scots) stiff in the hips, and slump (Essex) to walk heavily, noisily. You can almost hear the boots clumping.
Macfarlane writes superbly: the cover blurb quotes John Banville as saying 'He has a poet's eye and a prose style that would make many a novelist burn with envy'. Again, I don't think I can better this.

So why 4 and not 5 stars? Perhaps because, after the wider messages which I do connect with, the environment, climate and natural life of the world I live in (Adelaide Hills in South Australia) are utterly different, and my detailed fascination is focused on the environments with which I am most familiar and which I love. The Old Ways spoke to me more profoundly.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane explores the relationship between language and landscape. The book is structured in a series of essays covering nature writers and their works. It also serves as a memoir. Macfarlane traverses the British Isles and beyond, collecting specialized vocabularies that different communities have developed to describe their local terrains. These glossaries are inserted between each essay. The author believes we are losing our ability to describe the natural world just as we are losing our connection to it.

Macfarlane excels at nature writing. His prose is lyrical. He makes a compelling case for the importance of maintaining these specialized vocabularies as tools to express our appreciation for the natural world. I particularly enjoyed his essay regarding Barry Lopez, one of my personal favorite nature writers. I will likely be looking into several of the works mentioned in this book. It is a peaceful and relaxing read that I enjoyed very much.

[Paul Gallear · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I have thoroughly enjoyed Robert MacFarlane's other works and this book combines two subject - language and nature - which I love reading about.

But it struck me as a series of book reviews, each followed by a list of words. The chapters were well written, passionate and beautiful, as you would expect from MacFarlane. The lists however were tedious to read through, with no notes on pronunciation to help with the Gaelic or Welsh words and no clue as to whether the words functioned as nouns, adjective or verbs etc. I don't think I could name you one of the words listed in this book as they were just not memorable. MacFarlane might have been better served trying to assimilate them into his prose

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture, and willow. The Oxford Junior Dictionary in 2008 dropped these words as no longer relevant to a modern-day childhood. Macfarlane would make us all familiar with those words and many more that describe the natural world. His book is a kind of annotated glossary and is beautifully written.

[Radiantflux · Rating 4 out of 5]

11th book for 2020.

Robert Macfarlane is my favorite writer of the natural world. His use of language is both wonderfully precise and poetic, and so it was a particular pleasure to read Landmarks, both a celebration of the language of the natural world, and a call to arms to stop the loss of so many beautiful words to describe it.

He starts with a lament for the loss of childhoods exposed to the rough-and-tumble of nature; of their retreat indoors towards screens and away from trees, and ponds, and grassy meadows; of the loss of words for nature by children—gone are acorn, kingfisher, meadow, replaced by video-game, texting and Netflix.

He then in a series of chapters explores the use of language as it applies to particular categories of the natural world—water, mountains, woods, rocks, the North etc—detailing in each a particular author and their work that has inspired him in some personal fashion (e.g., The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd; Waterlog by Roger Deakin; Artic Dreams by Barry Lopez; The Peregrine by J.A. Baker). Hence each chapter is both a personal evocation to the beauty of a particular aspect of nature, and also a letter of thanks to a particular author’s work and the manner in which it has affected Macfarlane’s own life. The final chapter is a quite moving account of the language of childhood—childish in Macfarlane’s personal appellation.

Interspersed between each chapter are glossaries of British words relating to the themes of the preceding chapters collected over years by Macfarlane as wordsmith magpie; reading these aloud or listening to them on audiobook gives each glossary the form of a powerful prose poem in praise of a particular facet of the natural world.

The paperback includes an appendix of 500 additional words, gifted by readers to the author after the initial hardback’s publication—an indication of this work’s widespread appeal and impact.

4-stars.

[Arie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful concept for a book, a love letter to land and language and the intricacies of the relationships between the two - and for the most part, is delivered just as beautifully. MacFarlane is an excellent writer, and the first few chapters in particular sing with joy and passion for the words and places and writings he brings together. I adored the glossaries, and especially (in the audiobook version) the inclusion of a reading of the Peat Glossary discussed in the first chapter. I also enjoyed learning more about the life and work of Nan Shepherd and Roger Deakin, their relationships to the land they lived in, and the weaving of interpersonal narratives between the broader place-based ones.

I just wish that rigor and intensity could have carried over into the acknowledgement of the two particularly problematic writers/elements of writing that are brought up, almost apologetically, in later chapters and then glossed over just as quickly. It really jarred me out of the reading/listening and I wish it had been handled differently/much, much better. If the author is (and he clearly is) aware of the problematic nature of these writers, why only bring it up as if in passing? Why not give a least some depth to the discussion? Or better yet, why include those writers at all? (the second, including a sudden departure to other shores, felt particularly old-fashioned-for-the-sake-of-it odd even before the sudden skimmed-over anti-indigenous prejudice comes up)

[Sam Worby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the book about language and landscape I was hoping for.

I wanted something that evoked Holdstock. I got a series of university lectures, a reading list and a disappointing but pretty word hoard.

This book contains none of the layers, history, groundedness or dense sense of place I anticipated. It is oddly secondhand and distant.

In the sections where MacFarlane writes about other nature writers there feels like little new. In several chapters he revisits authors he has previously written about. In others he provides quotes and analysis of other authors he admires (hence the feeling of a university lecture). The personal experiences and sense of adventure that so enlivened his other books are almost absent, or reduced to walking into a cave, visiting an archive and other small vignettes. The chapter on children and landscape is lovely but over the top, and is too short.

The words are gorgeous but there is not enough and they are thinly adorned. Dialect is padded out by common scientific or mountaineering terms and the whole is very widely spaced on the page. I was hoping for more terms, more analysis of them, more etymology, more explorations made, parallels drawn.

So, I had my hopes up and was disappointed. It's not that this is a bad book. There are some intriguing ideas within and there is much precise, lyrical prose. I am left with the reluctant impression that this was rushed out based on MacFarlane's popularity.

[Ancestral Gaidheal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why did I read it? When first published, several people recommended this book to me, and it was recommended more than once by some. I imagine those recommendations came because of my like of the natural world, and of language. I have no idea why, but I put it on my 'wish list' and then my 'to be read pile' but never actually started it; these decisions I now regret.

What's it about? With the Oxford Children's Dictionary removing words relating to nature, e.g. acorn, in favour of technological terms, Robert Macfarlane explores the United Kingdom in search of those words to describe, and connect us to the natural world. Connection. That is the key to this book. In a time, and place which seems to breed disconnection, this book seeks to reunite us with a deep love for landscape, and language.

What did I like? Every single word, and most especially the glossaries. Rich in words and landscape, there is so much to enjoy, and explore in this book. I listened to the audio book, which is rather nicely done. I did query a few of the Gaelic pronunciations - being a learner of the language, not a native speaker, I may not completely comprehend the dialectal nuances. I am very pleased I opted to purchase the Kindle edition, too, so I can explore those glossaries at my leisure.

Oh, the joy I found in this book: learning new words for phenomenon I had no idea might even exist; remembering 'childish' the way children use language to describe their surroundings; and discovering new Gaelic words I wanted to include in my (ever-expanding) vocabulary.

The narrator, Roy McMillan, did a splendid job. I'm afraid I have no idea of the name of other gentleman whose voice was used to read out various words, but his voice gave luscious contrast to Mr McMillan's smooth tones.

What didn't I like? I could find no fault with this book. I find fault with myself for not reading it sooner.

Would I recommend it? Yes! Yes! Yes! Not necessarily the audio version though - not because it is not well read, but because once you've read the book, I'm pretty sure you'll want to keep it to hand to pore over the word glossaries, and then add to your own.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

For UK-based people who are interested in nature and wildlife, I think this is an important book. If English is not your native tongue or if you are not interested in the natural world, it is likely that you will not find this book so engaging or significant.

The main theme of the book is probably best described in this quote: "It is not, on the whole, that natural phenomena and entities themselves are disappearing; rather that there are fewer people able to name them, and that once they go unnamed they go to some degree unseen. Language deficit leads to attention deficit. As we further deplete our ability to name, describe and figure particular aspects of our places, our competence for understanding and imagining possible relationships with non-human nature is correspondingly depleted. It is a plea for us to not forget the words in our language that describe the natural world around us and its central idea is that, if we do forget these words, then our link with that world is weakened and that is a bad thing. As it happens, I am a keen fan of the British landscape and its wildlife, so I am sympathetic to the author's point of view, which is why I regard the book as important and is probably the main reason I have rated it highly. It is also very readable which helps.

That said, I did skim read some parts of the book. Each chapter covers a particular aspect of the landscape and ends with a glossary of neglected English words related to that aspect. Although I would say that these glossaries are a very important part of the book (they document words that are being lost), they are not the most scintillating reading. I skimmed them and picked out the words that my eyes landed on and that's the kind of thing I might do several more times.

The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is because of the structure. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of the landscape (I think I already said that) but does it by looking at the writing of someone who published "classic" books on that topic. This means that sometimes it feels like a book about nature that could have been written without leaving the house as it is almost a series of book reviews. However, taken as a whole, it is much more than that. As I say, if you are an English-speaking resident of the UK who cares about nature, you should probably read this. For everyone else, it's up to you!

[Yaaresse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a series of essays that combine nature, geography, weather, and the power of specificity with words. To that end, Macfarlane includes lists of words, most from various UK dialects, for land, weather and natural process. Most of the words are in danger of disappearing as man's connection with nature diminishes. As we continue to remove ourselves from nature, we begin to see/think in broad, bland strokes and lose both our perception of and the ability to talk about the natural world's intricate and nuanced features. Macfarlane builds his essays around his favorite works of other writers and word-hoarders, so this book is about the landscape of words and thought as much as about actual landscapes.

I do wish there was a pronunciation guide for the lists. Some of the words are so gorgeous in their specificity. One way to resuscitate words from the linguistic death watch is to work them into conversation, but that requires being able to say them. (At least until texting completely replaces conversation...which, by the looks of things, won't be too far in the future.) Gaelic, Welsh, Manx and the like are gorgeous languages, but hardly intuitive in pronunciation for the speaker of modern English (and less so for the speaker of modern American English.)

It is a beautifully written collection, a meditative read best savored a bit at a time.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this book, which promised to look at language and landscape, about "the power of language to shape our sense of place". However it failed to evoke any feeling of landscape, and was a series of essays, largely about other writers on the natural world. These were followed by perfunctory and random lists of words from scattered parts of Britain, completely outwith any context or insight. These odd lists contain numerous Gaelic words too, not introduced as a completely separate language, rendered dead without pronunciation notes, which sit cheek by jowl with endless neologisms of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

As a book it manages the unusual distinction of being both very dry and incredibly wet.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Okay, there were a few things I didn't love, but on the whole a book about words, walking, the UK, and related books promises to be a great read.

It is basically a discussion of and collection of words relating to nature and regions. Sounds riveting, right?! Macfarlane's chapters end with glossaries: flatlands, uplands, waterlands, coastlands, underlands, northlands, edgelands, earthlands, and woodlands. Along with the word hoards there are recommended books and mini-biographies.

Here's a random tip: when I put a book on my "Niche" bookshelf, that is a secret clue that this book may not be for everyone, especially the general reader.

Quotes worth copying:

We are and always have been name-callers, christeners.

Language deficit leads to attention deficit.

I live in a country so flat you could fax it.

And because I have refashioned myself as a walker, I copied words and definitions relative to ways of walking.
Bamble, buks, dander, doddle, fleggin, flinks, fuddle,
harl, hirple (HA! I recognized this from Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf!!),
hit the grit, nuddle, peddel, scimaunder,
slomp, spangin, yew-yaw

If those words don't edify you — well, you have some soul-searching to do! (j/k)

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I felt this was more of a literature review than anything entirely original.

Whilst Macfarlane's writing is always poetic and beautifully descriptive, this was a series of references to, and quotation of his favourite nature writers, including Roger Deakin, Nan Shepherd, Barry Lopez and J A Baker. And that is fine if you're unfamiliar with their books as it reveals something new, and would perhaps direct you to their fine writing. When you've read the books in question however, quotations of swathes of their passages becomes a little repetitive.

Also, the glossaries of terms regarding every aspect of nature is a good idea, but I can't help that feeling, in a book such as this, they are pages of fillers!

Anyway, I'm probably nitpicking a little. It's still a good book, there are just likely better titles by Macfarlane out there is all.

[a lil’ problem · Rating 3 out of 5]

whew baby i have a lot of thoughts about this book.

based on the synopsis, i was going into this book expecting to be more of an etymology/philology book, and i was excited to follow the history and journey of several interesting words, as well as how those words impact our perception of nature. it became clear after the first chapter, though, that this would really serve more as a sort of memoir and tribute to certain writers. one good thing about this book is it made me interested in a lot of people: it made me want to add a lot of books to my tbr (but i'm trying to not reach 500 books so i'm not doing that).

unfortunately, this meant that the book was not as affecting or engaging as i was hoping it would be. i can accept that if i found this at a different time in my life or if i was a different person, i would give this book more stars. the book was structured thusly: each chapter was about a certain type of environment (countrylands, highlands, lowlands, etc.) macfarlane writes a pretty well written essay about his journeys in these lands, and about the people (usually a person) who cared and wrote about it. at the end of the chapter there would be a several page glossary of words about that kind of environment, coming from various different languages and dialects. perhaps i'm just not the kind of person for this, but the glossary was not as affecting to me as i thought it might be. a lot of the words in the glossary came from a dialect that was not the story focused on in the prior chapter, and so it was just a lot of words. i would have preferred a couple words with a little more detailed story. but i understand the point of collecting all these words, to demonstrate the depth of knowledge we are losing about nature.

robert macfarlane is a very talented writer and there were some passages of this book that were incredibly moving, but most of them served as a biography, or they were quotes from some other book. one of my favourite chapters was the final one about words children come up with; macfarlane really shines when he's writing about the people who love the lands, less so an individual person, but this is probably me not being well-read enough. i would very much like to return to this in the future after i've read a couple of the texts referenced and see if i like it more.

furthermore, there were times in the book where it felt like macfarlane was very close to addressing colonialism and cultural erasure when talking about environmental destruction. there's a part where he talks about john muir, says "he respected everything, except for the Native Americans" and immediately moves on. the chapter about jaquetta hawkes references the dodgy politics, but brings up that a letter writer to hawkes is a nazi sympathizer and doesn't necessarily address those consequences. i'm not expecting a british book to touch on these topics in extreme detail, and there are certainly parts of the book where macfarlane talks about it (the first chapter talks about the erasure of Scottish Gaelic), but i feel like you can't have it both ways. if you're going to bring it up it feels negligent to not look at it head on. i'm not accusing this book of being unpolitical because it can be subtle at times, but because it is direct at some times and evasive at others.

ultimately, i agree a lot with macfarlane's central thesis, which is that we need words to describe things; being able to name things is part of learning to love them and preserve them. certainly in today's environment we need to take care to take care. the sciences are one way we can salvage what we have done to this planet; but the importance of the environmental humanities is often understated or not stated at all. he does get this point clearly and strongly across at points in the book, and i commend him for taking on what is an extremely thorough project, although by his words by no means exhaustive. i just wish it was a little more focused on the depth than the breadth.

but that's my problem for having certain expectations, not his for not meeting them.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macfarlane, a British nature writer with a poet’s sensibility, has managed to write a passionate, idiosyncratic love letter to landscape, language, literature, and the relationship between them.

“Words act as compass; place-speech serves literally to en-chant the land—to sing it back into being, and to sing one’s being back into it.”

Prompted by the Oxford Junior Dictionary’s dropping of several nature words (a tragic list including but not limited to words such as acorn, bluebell, dandelion, heather, kingfisher, mistletoe, otter, and willow) due to them no longer being relevant to a modern-day childhood, Landmarks is Macfarlane’s bid to save the British Isle’s rich and evocative place-vocabulary. His thesis is that language shapes our sense of place, that landscape and language are intertwined, and that to appreciate one you need the other. When words are lost, we can’t describe our environment, and our connection to it is lessened; we love the things we name.

“Without a name made in our mouths, an animal or a place struggles to find purchase in our minds or our hearts.”

It’s a unique book, impossible to categorize. There are prose chapters, in which Macfarlane focuses on narratives built around certain places by discussing the work of other nature writers he admires, including Nan Sheperd, Roger Deakin, J.A. Baker, Barry Lopez, and John Muir. It’s also partly a memoir: All of these writers influenced his sense of wonder and his own writing, but some also became cherished friends with whom he would journey around the UK, exploring the landscape by walking the moors, swimming in icy lochs, and hiking up mountains.

“Distance enables miracles of scrutiny; remoteness is a medium of clarification. I am, and have been for as long as I know, north-minded: drawn to high latitudes and high altitudes.”

But Landmarks started because of a dictionary dropping nature words, and nature words are at the heart of it. Macfarlane is a self-proclaimed word-hoarder, a lover of etymology, and for years, like a wordsmith magpie, he has traversed the British Isles and collected the vast vocabularies of dozens of languages and regional dialects that have developed to describe the local terrain. These words—thousands of them, yet by no means complete—are remarkable for how precise, poetic, and localised they are, as if they had somehow grown out of the land itself. It felt less like reading the dictionary, and more like getting a field guide to the literature of nature.

“I have had such pleasure meeting them, these words: migrant birds, arriving from distant places with story and metaphor caught in their feathers.”

The glossaries, thoughtfully grouped together, cover geography, topography, geology, weather, flora, fauna, and all other possible aspects of the natural world, and the words range from poetic (summer geese: steam that rises from the moor when rain is followed by hot sunshine; Plato’s fire: shadows dancing inside a tree hollow on a sunny day in a wood), to amusingly straight-forward (turdstool: very substantial cowpat; thick wet: dense mist) or specific (hot-spong: sudden power of heat felt when the sun comes from under a wind-shifted cloud; fizmer: rustling noise produced in grass by petty agitations of the wind), to onomatopeic (zwer: whizzing noise made by a covey of partridges as they break suddenly from cover; slub-slab: noise of an animal splashing through mud and water), to delightfully whimsical (flinks: to ramble in a rompish manner, as a frolicsome girl might; wonty-tump: molehill).

“The inestimate value of the instant is proved by its perishability.”

To bring it back around to the reason Macfarlane wrote this book to begin with, it concludes with a magical chapter on children’s experiences of nature, and the “childish” language they use to engage with it—and Macfarlane means it in the best possible sense of the word: “innocent of eye and at ease with wonder“. I may not have felt as grounded in the landscapes he was describing as I would have liked, but that’s down to me not being overly familiar with most of the described British terrain, or the nature writers he wrote about—things that can be remedied. His enthusiasm was nonetheless contagious, a joyous reminder of the beauty, peace, and healing that is to be found in open spaces, whatever they may look like.

“There are experiences of landscape that will always resist articulation, and of which words offer only a remote echo—or to which silence is by far the best response. Nature does not name itself. Granite does not self-identify as igneous. Light has no grammar. Language is always late for its subject. Sometimes on the top of a mountain I just say ‘Wow.'”

—————

January 2026 selection for ...Like a Good Book Club

[Shira]

Een wat stroeve leeservaring. Is dat mijn of Macfarlane's schuld? Waarschijnlijk eerder de mijne, al noem ik het liever geen schuld maar een onpassend boek bij mijn verwachting ervan, en deels een onpassend boek gezien mijn niet-helemaal-maar-toch-enigszins-vaststaande lees- en interesse voorkeuren. Volgens mij begon ik Landmarks te lezen omdat het me een passend contrast leek voor mijn voornamelijk binnenshuis geleefde leven, zowel toen ik er in september in begon te lezen, als ook nu. Een leven waarin ik me toch gedeeltelijk vrijwillig veelal binnen bevond, openbare ruimtes met al dan niet natuur, grotendeels mijdend, ondanks of dankzij de pandemie, mezelf wijsmakend dat het dankzij is, ook al is ondanks waarschijnlijk net zo waar. Wat beter te lezen dan een boek waarbij 'de natuur' zo centraal wordt gesteld - voor de toch wel gevoelde behoefte aan weidsheid, maar waarbij taal toch een evenzeer of niet grotere rol leek te spelen dan 'de natuur' op zich. Want, hoe over natuur te schrijven - zonder, en mét, taal?

Dat Macfarlane met laatstgenoemde zijn boek begint, een pleidooi schrijft voor de particulariteit van taal. Of een her(r)ijking daarvan bepleit, dat het neerkomt op de belangrijke functie die taal heeft op hoe we de wereld, en dus de natuur ervaren en de daarmee gepaarde afhankelijkheid van onder meer, natuurbehoud, met de taal die wij kennen en al dan niet (meer) gebruiken. Dat was sterk en wat ik hoopte te vinden in dit boek. En vervolgens verloor ik deels mijn interesse door het gevoelde langzame tempo van het boek en de verandering van opzet. In de rest van het boek laat Macfarlane ons voornamelijk kennis maken maken met natuurschrijvers als Roger Deakin, Nan Shephard en J.A. Baker in hoofdstukken als essays (meteen ook de schrijvers wier werk ik graag wilde lezen, liever dan doorgaan in het boek waarin Macfarlane diens leven en werk toch ook zeer aantrekkelijk beschrijft en analyseert). Dat wordt afgewisseld met uitgebreide woordenlijsten (gevoeld uitgebreide) waarin bij elk hoofdstuk woorden en uitdrukkingen van verschillende dialecten uit het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Ierland samen zijn gebracht. Woorden als 'bumbel (verb, Shetlandic) - to flounder around in water' zijn daarin terug te vinden. En voor zo een woord zou ik graag een vergelijkbaar woord kennen in het Nederlands, maar ik ken het niet.

Dit is een beetje een ongeordende mini-uiteenzetting waarmee ik wil zeggen dat ik van sommige delen blij ben dat ik ze las, dat Macfarlane hier veel verzamelt heeft, en denk ik ook echt iets toevoegt, dat ik schrijvers leerde kennen waarvan ik denk dat ze me aanspreken en die volgens mij erg mooie talige-natuur-boeken schreven waarbij taal niet slechts documentatie-taal is maar veel meer dan dat. Misschien had ik dit boek te lang op een soort non-actieve manier bij me, waardoor ik nu denk dat Macfarlane's doel en boek en taal, een meest voor de hand liggende is. Ja; we moeten ons bewust blijven van de natuur, die van dichtbij als ook verder weg, en ja, taal en natuur (of misschien in het bijzonder 'oplettendheid') zijn van belang voor hoe we de wereld en onszelf daarin ervaren en/of kunnen ervaren, en, wat gaat er verloren met het verlies van woorden om uitdrukking te geven aan zoveel? 'Or as Tim Dee neatly puts it, 'Without a name made in our mouths, an animal or a place struggles to find purchase in our minds or our hearts.''

En toch blijft er een stem in mij die bij onderstaande alleen maar kan instemmen, al is het misschien een te romantisch en gemakkelijk standpunt om tegenover verlies van woorden, van taal, te zetten. Desalniettemin citeer ik het toch maar, al is het maar om me er aan te herinneren dat het voelt als belangrijk, maar dat dat niet betekent dat alles dan maar beter onbenoembaar is of moet blijven (al vind ik dat dus soms wel - maar misschien heb ik er dan gewoon de woorden niet voor):

'There are experiences of landscape that will always resist articulation, and of which words offer only a remote echo - or to which silence is by far the best response. Nature does not self-identify as igneous. Light has no grammar. Language is always late for its subject. Sometimes on the top of a mountain I just say, 'Wow.'' p.10

En dit, omdat ik het mooi vind en juist een contrast met bovenstaande biedt:

'In both Lewis and Arizona, language is used not only to navigate but also to charm the land. Words act as compass; place-speech serves literally to en-chant the land - to sing it back into being, and to sing one's being back into it.' p. 14

Hoewel ik het bewonderenswaardig vind wat Macfarlane hier gedaan heeft, worstelde ik me een beetje erg traag door het boek heen. Dat kwam onder meer ook door de soms toch lang lijkende woordenlijsten die, hoewel interessant en ook mooi, toch gefocust zijn op talen en dialecten en werelden die mij niet zo dichtbij staan - en daar ga ik misschien de mist in (is er een woord voor letterlijk de mist in lopen?) -, maar wat maakte dat ik er denk ik iets actiever bij zo blijven wanneer ik het in het Nederlands zou hebben gelezen en misschien zelfs als het ging om plaatstaal uit en in Nederland. Maar misschien zeg ik hier ook mee dat een zo gedetailleerde focus op taal niet zo mijn ding is of was. Of niet zo mijn ding in de context van Macfarlane's schrijven. Dat een actievere houding tegenover natuur en plaatsen en opmerkzaamheid van alles, wellicht ook mijn plezier bij het lezen van de woordenlijsten zou hebben vergroot en dat het gelezen hebben van Landmarks mijn houding wellicht wat heeft veranderd en dat ik vanaf nu eerder leegtes of voltes in taal en/of in de natuur zal opmerken, maar ik weet het niet.

[Nick Swarbrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utter stunner of a book: language and landscape intertwine, are at variance, illuminate each other...

Just for the record, I've just finished my third read now, following my love for Lost Words, and struck by the humour and word-play as much as anything. It is a rare writer who can tell his audience that the kestrel is also known as a "wind-f*cker" and still invite awe for how language can be specific about different types of hill or waterway.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Robert Macfarlane visits some inspiring places, to meet the people and
'collect' the words that evoke the area. Abridged for radio by Penny
Leicester.

[Fern A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Landmarks is a book exploring the relation between words and landscape and how our change of words and reduced nature vocabulary has impacted our own relationship with the land.

There were parts of this book I absolutely loved. McFarlane explores words from different dialects that have given names to very specific moments or actions in nature. He spends time on the Isle of Lewis with a man who has collected a dictionary of Gaelic words and phrases very specific to that area. This was very interesting and very readable.

What I was a bit less keen on and reduced the stars for me was some chapters that just explored and repeated other authors books about nature. For example a large section was given to explore the work of Nan Shepherd, having read her book myself, this was a bit dull for me as I was already familiar with the discussions. McFarlane is a talented writer and I think he would have enough to say that was new and noteworthy without these sections. I also had a slight pet hate for the audiobook reader’s attempts at a Scottish accent that was the same stereotypical one for each area (though that’s probably just me!)

Overall though this has been a book that’s made me think a lot. We have lost so much knowledge about nature and landscape and we have lots the words with them. I feel this is a chicken and egg conundrum- did we loose the words as we stopped connecting or have we stopped connecting as we no longer have the words? Do we have time to refind this language and breath life into it? How many words have we lost forever?

The real issue however here is can we ever relearn what future generations knew and what harm is the lack of this knowledge doing.