Reading 1001 discussion

Placeholder for future reviews

I've enjoyed other books by Iain Sinclair, but I think when I read this books last year, I was kind of getting tired of his style and felt this one was missing a special element or angle that illuminated it beyond just being monologues semi centered on a British infrastructure or natural feature. This one is themed around the Thames, which I thought I would enjoy more as the river is focal or peripheral to so much London history and defines many things for contemporary London life. I did enjoy some those parts.

What I didn't love is that this one felt a little monotonous as it went on instead building on the ideas already covered and building forward as a narrative, which I felt he did more successfully in his book 'London Orbital" about travelling the M25. (I gave that one 4 stars). As well, the 'blokey' tone (someone else described it this way in a review and thought it fit perfectly), even if it is supposed to be semi-ironic (I'm not sure if it was though), and the book's inability to produce a female character with dimension that is even spoken about with dimension (the parts with the character Edith Cadiz stick out to me) lowered my perception of this book. I gave it 2 stars. I feel like since there are already similarly themed but stronger efforts from Sinclair on the list, I might have excluded this one.