Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wind, Sand and Stars
Book Review: Beautiful and thoughtful insight into a pilot's world
Summary: 5 Stars
This is quite a famous book and well received generally. The language is very poetical and the metaphors beautiful.
Besides being a thoughtful individual what struck me most about Exupery was his sensitivity to all around him. He has many perspicacious observations about humanity. The famous quote (paraphrased here).. love does not consist of looking at each other, but looking together in the same direction.. is from this book.
Many times the author's views are hard to comprehend..That might be due to the structuring of the writing or just inadequacy on my part!
Overall a very beautiful book opening up the brave world of early flying.
Book Review: absolutely lovely
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a wonderful book.
The author is poetic as well as thoughtful and thought provoking.
Although this book was written a long time ago, it is still valid today. The thoughts and philosophy of the author truly apply to today. It also is just as exciting as if it were written yesterday.
Well worth every penny.
Truly a classic worth reading
Enjoy.
Book Review: Fascinating - A Philosopher's Adventurer!
Summary: 5 Stars
When St Exupery's plane was found off of the coast of southern France this year, it was a melancholy triumph, one of those successes that leave us feeling hollow and sad. Why? Because it shatters the fantasy we were all content to have, that he flew off into the sunset and oblivion, and left this world altogether? Perhaps, but more than that, it offers a sad reminder that we cannot, in the end, overcome the mundane reality of death by loving life so much.
Books, however, are not people, and they can acheive this feat, even if their authors cannot. Wind Sand and Stars is a book that deserves just this fate. It is a vital document of life - and the strugles of any one insignifican human in the vast desert of humanity.
Not everyone likes this book, and that is their right, but I would go ahead and recomend it to anyone. Criticisms of this book that I have seen come primarily from two sources: Adults who thought it was too childish, and children who thought it was too adult. An odd mix, isn't it? To address the later, it is not a childrens book. Many read the Little Prince, and like it so much that they want to find other books by the same author. Unfotunately St Exupery spends a lot of time celebrating the mundane, something most children haven't cultivated the patience for in literature. However, it's themes are not too mature for a child, and it would be great for a parent to read to their children, where verbal story-telling could make up for where the prose might lag.
The other criticism I have heard is that this book is juvenile and romantic. I for one don't see these as faults to the book, but as virtues. I have done some extraordinary things in my life, and it is largely because I have the peculiar juvenile idiocy to not know better than to give up. Romanticism and dreaming are not as counter productive as some people think.
But what is more, I think anyone who writes off this book as a work of juvenile adventure, and light-weight romanticism is missing the greater point. The Little Prince has been so successfull because it is much more than a childrens book, and Wind Sand and Stars is similarly much more than an adventure memoir. Compare it, for instance, as a friend of mine did, to My Life as an Adventurer by Sven Anders Hedin. Hedin no doubt had some amazing adventures, but he simply narates his extraordinary adventures without any emotional inflection just like he was giving a resume or driving directions on the highway. St Exupery is the polar oposite of this: he carefully ponders every facet of his experience, whether it is rain falling on the bus carrying him to the airstrip, or a desert so imense that it is universe in and of itself.
He infuses everything he sees with his own soul. Nothing is mundane for St Exupery. Blades of grass, unnamed streams, stars millions of miles away all take on personalities of their own and are given a unique introduction by one of the best writers of the Twentieth century. Perhaps this is juvenile - juvenile in the sense that it is this same kind of imagination and bouyance that allows children to have amazing adventure exploring their own back yard. I believe that it is also this passion for the world around us that allows children to learn at a pace that far outstrips even the most inteligent adults.
To think of this book, though, as all light-spirited adventure, though, is also a mistake. Although St Exupery has an amazing sense of curiosity and imagination, he was a very complex and realistic man. Adventure is itself a very dark human undertaking. To cast oneself out of the comfortable world of the known in a constant search for something more, something beyond takes the kind of anxious discontent that breeds many of the best writers and adventurers, but also kills them.
No human is uncomplicated, least of all adventurers and writers. St Exupery was both. For me, his writting is infused with a restless longing, and a mournfull tinge of sorrow at beeing bound to our increasingly desperate world. That is also what makes the joys he finds so seet: the contrast. A soft life breed malaise, a bitter life breeds ecstacy. Although it is not for all, I feel driven to follow St Exupery's path: to push the dark boundries of our world, even if they are just in our mind.
This internal adventure, more than any daring escapade, is what makes St Exupery a Philosopher's Adventurer.
Book Review: A classic of aviation and adventure literature
Summary: 5 Stars
An absolutely brilliant work. Keep in mind that many of the bad reviews here were for a different version/translation of this book. This one is almost twice as long and sticks far better to the author's orginal work. This collection of stories is the perfect bedtime reading. You can finish off each story in an hour or so and drift to sleep with dreams of adventure and travel. The author relates the early days of air travel, when the pilots were quite often taking their lives in their own hands each time they took flight. Crash landings in the Sahara were part of job, and rather commonplace for those daring pilots that dared to carry mail and supplies over the great desert.
The author writes in a simple and magical prose that carries all readers to the co-pilot seat on these amazing true adventures.
It is rare to find an individual who lived such an amazing life as Saint-Exupery, and rarer still to find one who could write about their experiences with such clarity, beauty and detail.
Highly recommended. A great treasure of literature.
Book Review: For adolescent romantics
Summary: 1 Stars
Perhaps the translation was bad? After all, the book won a big prize in France. But for me the prose was pedestrian when not purple. The tone was basically puffery for being a pilot. This is the sort of book that would likely excite a schoolboy or girl who is full of romance for adventure. But not for the mature.