Rate this book

Ciò Che Conta è La Bicicletta: La Ricerca Della Felicità Su Due Ruote (2011)

by Robert Penn(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

8862203101 (ISBN13: 9788862203104)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Ponte alle Grazie

review 1: Enjoyable paean to the bicycle and craftsmanship. Penn tells the story of his quest to build himself the perfect racing bike. While explaining how his bespoke bike is made by the best manufacturers and craftsmen of bicycles and bicycle parts, he also writes about the industrial and cultural history of the bike. With a good editor and half the length this would have been worth four stars. With good illustrations and caption it could even have been five stars.
review 2: What can you say about a guy from Wales who rode around the world because an Irish woman inspired him? foolish? Naive? Soft hearted sentimentalist? I am sure somebody has already had their say about Robert Penn's private devices, his proclamatory penchant for his own garage, his mountainous asc... moreents, the people he hob knobs with, his own rough scrapes flying down nepalese gravel roads...it all sounds so free spirited and liberalizing a reader might be sidled with grief for their own lack of experience. As a journalist approaches a story though, Penn forgoes his own (admittedly infrequent, compared to an average Strava user's twitter feed) philandering, and adopts a humble, awed perspective, as if he were holding the museum curators hand after wandering into the lecture hall after closing time. As a cyclist and as a journalist, he wants to know the long history of each component: the chain, the seat, the handlebars, the derailleur, the frame and does each piece of engineering the justice it deserves. As a cyclist himself, Penn comes across as an individualist and nearly peerless - his attitude seems appropriate for the characters he encounters while building himself what amounts to a white elephant. The vast majority of people who ride a bicycle would never have recourse to something like Penn's investment, but any of them could take it out for spin. Perhaps that's what Penn would want to know he had expressed in his memoir - dream bike or not, if it's got two wheels, a drivetrain, a seat, handlebars and a sturdy frame, it'll roll. less

Download links for: Ciò che conta è la bicicletta: la ricerca della felicità su due ruote

Advertising