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A review by albon
The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District by James Rebanks
5.0
2017 review:
That's it, I'm packing my bags and leaving for the country side to become a farmer.
The Shepherd's Life is the memoir of a shepherd. And that's it. Sure, he does a couple of other things too, like attend university in Oxford (despite flunking in school) and getting married, but mostly this book is about him and sheep.
If this books sounds extremely uninteresting to you, don't read it, because you will most likely be bored out of your mind. But if you're in any way interested in farming, or sheep, or just how people who reject the life "in the fast lane" and live a more traditional life live, definitely check this out.
Because I really, really loved it. The writing is incredible atmospheric. I highlighted so many good quotes, and if I'm being completely honest I cried a couple of times for some reason. Everything just felt so emotional. I feel like I really connected with James Rebanks (and I can't wait to keep up to date with his life on twitter).
As you can probably tell I'm failing to find the words to explain how much this book resonated with me, so I'll just leave you with a quote that I found really poignant:
«My grandfather was, quite simply, one of the great forgotten silent majority of people who live, work, love, and die without leaving much written trace that they were ever here. He was, and we his descendants remain, essentially nobodies as far as anyone else is concerned. But that’s the point. Landscapes like ours were created by and survive through the efforts of nobodies. That’s why I was so shocked to be given such a dead, rich, white man’s version of its history at school. This is a landscape of modest hardworking people. The real history of our landscape should be the history of the nobodies.»
That's it, I'm packing my bags and leaving for the country side to become a farmer.
The Shepherd's Life is the memoir of a shepherd. And that's it. Sure, he does a couple of other things too, like attend university in Oxford (despite flunking in school) and getting married, but mostly this book is about him and sheep.
If this books sounds extremely uninteresting to you, don't read it, because you will most likely be bored out of your mind. But if you're in any way interested in farming, or sheep, or just how people who reject the life "in the fast lane" and live a more traditional life live, definitely check this out.
Because I really, really loved it. The writing is incredible atmospheric. I highlighted so many good quotes, and if I'm being completely honest I cried a couple of times for some reason. Everything just felt so emotional. I feel like I really connected with James Rebanks (and I can't wait to keep up to date with his life on twitter).
As you can probably tell I'm failing to find the words to explain how much this book resonated with me, so I'll just leave you with a quote that I found really poignant:
«My grandfather was, quite simply, one of the great forgotten silent majority of people who live, work, love, and die without leaving much written trace that they were ever here. He was, and we his descendants remain, essentially nobodies as far as anyone else is concerned. But that’s the point. Landscapes like ours were created by and survive through the efforts of nobodies. That’s why I was so shocked to be given such a dead, rich, white man’s version of its history at school. This is a landscape of modest hardworking people. The real history of our landscape should be the history of the nobodies.»