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A review by shrutislibrary
The Art of Flaneuring: How to Wander with Intention and Discover a Better Life by Erika Owen
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
2.75
A brief history and a practical guide on how one can enjoy the art of "Flaneuring", a French practice of strolling down the city streets and observing, taking in the details, the sights, the scents, and the people around you. It's a 19th-century fancy term for people-watching with intention (but don't pull a Joe from 'You' and go stalking lol). I found this book to be very Western centred - obviously coming from a white woman author from a so-called First-World nation, so I would like to research more into how this act of 'intentional wandering' is consciously or unconsciously practised in other cultures and countries like India, the Middle East, etc. While I can take away some tips from this book, most of the resources and spaces that the author mentions are unavailable to me and my surroundings. As the author rightly points out in the book, walking for leisure indeed is a privilege both in terms of the physical ability of your muscles to carry you from one place to another and in terms of how readily "safe" open spaces are available to women throughout the world that is decidedly not the West.