Book review of A Walking Life by Antonia Malchik

"A writing is finished not when you can't put anything more in, but when you can't take anything more out."

These wise words were shared with me by a great writer, but that was not Ms. Antonia Malchik, who is a good writer, but not a great writer, or anyway is a good writer who lacked a good editor. Malchik puts way too much in, and takes nothing out. Delete 50 or 60 pages of needless digressions, tedious personal anecdotes, overloaded details of scientific experiments, and now useless to us formerly-current events, and this would have been a great book. Look, for one blustering example, at the four pages of Acknowledgments. The author lists almost two-hundred names, including many of her high school teachers, and every member of her local writing group. Too much! She even credits her publisher's undeserving editor, who was obviously asleep at the keyboard. Fearful of not crediting and therefore offending anyone she knew, she instead offends her readers.

Insightful, informative, well researched, and well written, this book nevertheless meanders all over the page.

Throughout the book, to spare myself the near endless ennui, I was compelled to skim passages and to skip entire pages. Too late now for me, but I wish I had skipped the entire penultimate chapter, aptly titled “Meander,” in which the author, in pursuit of prehistoric footprints, aimlessly meanders in one chapter-long personal anecdote across the British and Montanan landscapes to drive home the point about the inadequacies of public transportation, inadequacies that she had already documented earlier in the book. As though this were news that no one else knew.

Still, many phrases and sentences shine with poetic beauty and profundity. The pages relevant to the benefits, the mechanics, the paleontology, the philosophy, and even the politics of walking are worth your purchase and your browsing of this book. Just don't read the whole dang thing.