Reading Road Trip 2020Current location: UtahOh, Mr. Abbey, how do I loathe thee?Let me count the ways:I loathe the way you wrapped a gopher snake around your waist and stroked your “friend's” head, thinking you were “astonishing and delighting any tourists” who happened by. You were supposed to be serving as a park ranger, Mr. Abbey, not a showboating dipshit who wanted to stroke a proxy second head in front of female visitors to the park. None of these ladies were “astonished” or “delighted,” b...

Any discussion of the great Southwest regional writer Edward Abbey invariably turns to the fact that he was a pompous self-centered hypocritical womanizer. And those were his good qualities (just kidding, Michelle). He advocated birth control and railed against immigrants having children yet fathered five children himself, he fought against modern intrusion in the wilderness yet had no problem throwing beer cans out of his car window, He hated ranchers and farmers yet was a staunch supporter of

I'm not sure why everyone loves this book, or Edward Abbey in general. I couldn't even finish this. He is a macho hypocritical egomaniac, hiding behind the veil of saving the earth.totally thumbs down.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I was able to. Abbey includes some beautifully poetic writing about the desert landscape at times and if that remained the central focus of the book, it would be fantastic; however, the other focus of Desert Solitaire is Abbey himself and, at least based on the way he presents himself here, I just don't like Edward Abbey. He's pompous, both racist and sexist, hypocritical, and a rabbit murderer. He's not the kind of company I want to keep.

Part Walden, part Mein Kampf ... Desert Solitaire (1968) is to a certain extent sand-mad Edward Abbey's homage to the beauty of the American Southwest and to the necessity of wilderness ... but mostly, the book is an autobiographical paean to the sheer wonder of Abbey himself. Like the pioneers, prospectors, and developers who preceded him, Abbey lays claim to all the canyonlands and Four Corners region of southern Utah and northern Arizona: "Abbey's Country" he calls it, and he seeks to fill ev...

Desert Solitaire seemed the right book to take along on a trip to the southwest in September 2009. Abbey writes of the beauty of the southwest. As a ranger at Arches National Park he had a close relationship with some of our country’s most exquisite scenery. In the 18 essays that make up the book, he offers not only his appreciation for the sometimes harsh environment of Utah and Arizona, but his notions on things political. Those are not so compelling. He tells tales of people he has known and

Anyone who thinks about nature will find things to love and despise about Desert Solitaire. One moment he's waxing on about the beauty of the cliffrose or the injustice of Navajo disenfranchisement and the next he's throwing rocks at bunnies and recommending that all dogs be ground up for coyote food. He says "the personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself" (p. 6) and then proceeds to personify every rock, bird, bush, and mountain. He's loving, salty, pet...

This came across my horizon through a list book - the 1000 books you should read before you die, by J. Mustich. . . never had I heard of Edward Abbey and his fierce opinions specifically captured in his book Desert Solitaire, all about the nature spilled over the earth in the Four Corners area of the southwest. I don't usually think about that area. . . I was deeply in love there once upon a time, a love that slid into a carefully catered (the most overused word these days, but accurate in many

Almost all my friends who have read this book have given it five stars but not written reviews. Hey friends. *poke*I feel like this book has been recommended to me numerous times, enough to compel me to buy it one day from Amazon, where it has festered unread in my Kindle library for at least a year. But the universe was commanding me to read it, three mentions in 2015, so I buckled down to read it. My only wish is that I had been reading it IN Utah so I could have seen some of the places mentio...

The only problem with waiting so long to read a seminal work, by a seminal author, is that you have the idea in your head who they will be. This? I kept thinking. This is the controversial Edward Abbey? This is what’s considered polemic? What, this good-humored common sense?More funny than it has a right to be. More alive. Also, what Abbey held up himself as his standard: interesting, original, important, and true. A deep respect for our wilderness— and more importantly, our wildness— and a deep...

I agree with several of the other reviewers: Desert Solitaire is basically an Edward Abbey selfie. Not a bad looking face but it's inside that counts--not all of it bad, but enough of it to be cloying and smacking of hypocrisy.

Step back in time to the 1960s and discover the Utah desert with Edward Abbey. This book is full of beautiful nature writing about his time spent working as a ranger at Arches National Park. He describes his explorations, either alone or with one person, into regions of desert, mountains, and rivers. He vividly describes his love of the desert wilderness in passages such as:“Gusts of sand swirl before me, stinging my face. But there is still too much to see and marvel at, the world very much ali...

This is one of the few books I don't own that I really really really wish I did. I love this book. It makes me want to pack up my Jeep and head out for Moab. I love Abbey's descriptions of the desert, the rivers, and the communion with solitude that he learns to love over the course two years as a ranger at Arches National Park.Abbey explores environmentalism and government policies on the national parks. It wasn't my favorite part of the book, but he manages to do it in such a way that it's not...

Imagine what Edward Abby would have to say if he were still alive to see what humankind has further wrought.In not having read this particular book of Abbey's before, I've shortchanged my reading experience. To me, his narrative in Desert Solitaire is befitting the setting, at once harsh and lulling, even hauntingly poetic with discordant notes. If you discern the writing's undercurrent, you may also feel its poignancy. In this book, the best of his writing to my mind even if a little drawn out,...

The late Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire is a sardonic mix of character studies that reveal the observer as much as those profiled. The author himself is best described as a contrarian, a curmudgeon, an intellectually-driven, free-spirited man who celebrates anarchy & random disorder, while railing against what he saw as the dross of a routine, tidy & systematic existence. Abbey has described himself as having been driven by equal parts of anger & love. One of my favorite quotes from the author

I know, I know. This is Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. The favored book of the masses and the environmentalists' bible. I feel guilty giving it only 2 stars like I'm treading on holy ground. I purposely read this while recently traveling to Arches National Park, the VERY place he lived/worked while penning these deep thoughts. So I guess I set myself up for some magical, mystical moment to occur - only compounding my disappointments. Granted, he does write some good descriptions about being in...

With great difficulty, I sometimes think about my own mortality, the years I have left on earth, how with each year that I get older, the years remaining disproportionately seem shorter. Admittedly, it's a depressing train of thought to entertain, and makes me want to crawl under a proverbial rock and die...it also has a sickening domino effect with my thoughts then residing in the eternal questions of life—why am I here, what is my purpose in life, etc...and all the anxieties and regrets that g...

I'm sorry, I know I should finish Book Club books. But they guy is an arrogant a**hole and I'd rather spend my little free time reading something I enjoy.

This man is such a hypocrite! He is preaching respect for the wild outdoor spaces, then he has the audacity to relate how he kills a little hidden rabbit just for the fun of it! His philosophy of locking up wild places with no roads, so they are only accessible to the fit hiker is also very exclusionary. Roads are tools, allowing old and young, fit and handicapped, to view the wonders and beauty of this country. Yes teach love and respect of this beauty and of the wildlife, but allow people to p...

Why didn't I read this book sooner?? I asked myself....because I was meant to read it now. Right now, as I am looking at the arches and canyons described - as they are so fresh in my mind just returning home. As I can hear the canyon wren's song and feel the sun and breeze and snowflakes on my face.With the Navajo sandstone dust still in my boots. Now was the perfect time.