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Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours Of Toronto (2010)

by Shawn Micallef(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1552452263 (ISBN13: 9781552452264)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Coach House Books

review 1: I'm a big fan of this book! I picked up a copy at the Coach House Wayzgoose party and soon started to read it on my streetcar rides to work. What a great way to read about the city, as you drive through different neighbourhoods that are described in the book you're reading.Shawn Micallef describes various 'walks' through areas of Toronto, giving historical or trivial detail about the buildings & sites, past and present. It's a similar experience to going on a guided walking tour, only this time you re-create images of the city in your head.It definitely helps if you are fairly well acquainted with Toronto's various neighbourhoods. I admit I turned first to the walks in the areas I'm most familiar with. In that respect, it's really a book for Torontonians only. I would not ... morerecommend this to anyone who hasn't lived here. But, if you do live in Toronto, and enjoy the flaneur experience - this is the book for you!
review 2: One of my goals this summer was to spend more time exploring Toronto on foot, and while I may not have done as much of that as I would have liked, I feel like Shawn Micallef’s book of psychogeographic tours made up for my unrealized explorations. I thought when I started reading the walks I’d only want to read the ones about areas I’m familiar with, but I found myself strangely drawn into foreign parts of the city. To be clear, these aren’t “And on your left” tours, but rather geographically guided reflections on Toronto as it was and as it is today, on architectural details and cultural influences that give a neighbourhood its character. I particularly enjoyed Micallef’s tone, which is humble, and often reverent, and while he does express some of his own opinions, they are identified clearly as such, and he doesn’t impress his own judgments on the reader. Hand-drawn maps my Marlena Zuber add a touch of whimsy to the text and help the reader organize the mental guideposts that Micallef sets out. But the greatest pleasure of this book is the state of mind it induced: I found these essays almost meditative, and they always left me feeling calm, a little more in love with my hometown, and made my feet itch, just dying to take a stroll. less

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