Bicycle Diaries

by David Byrne

Book Overview

A renowned musician and visual artist presents an idiosyncratic behind-the-handlebars view of the world's cities Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour. Byrne's choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670021148
• ISBN13: 9780670021147
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Magnificent Marriage of Right Brain and Left Brain

Admiring David since Talking Head days, and identifying with his songs about buildings, food, air, guitars, etc., I was pleased to find a further deep dive into his brain activity. His world is art because he is art. I am art. Bikes are art. If you are an extreme visual person, all your sensual portals have a visual sense to it. I enjoyed this book for that reason. As I was reading, I traveled to the same places and met the same people he did. FUN! Plus, it tickled my natural interest in design and architecture. I like this guy!

Very fun book

I really enjoyed this book. I live in his "home base" New York and have traveled to many of the places he has been. I was amazed by his perceptiveness and I enjoyed reading his musings on various subjects (often about architecture or politics) related to these places, especially the chapter on the Phillipines. I also liked the black and white pictures he included. As memoir or as travel writing, I highly recommend this book to other readers.

Thoughts on culture, globalization, and new ways cities are becoming more bike-friendly

BICYCLE DIARIES comes from musician and visual artist David Byrne, who has been riding a bike as his main means of transport in New York City - and who began taking folding bikes around the world when traveling. His observations of his encounters with people around the world include thoughts on culture, globalization, and new ways cities are becoming more bike-friendly, and make this a powerful guide!

Great book

I love David Byrne and I love this book. I also ride my bike everywhere and love to travel, so this book is a win-win-win. The chapters are broken down by city so you can randomly choose a chapter to read. He has interesting observations and insights on the culture, architecture, and other aspects of cities that go beyond the random biker's commentary.

Wonderful views of our world

David Byrne is a smart, funny, artistic sort of fellow whose talents, inclination and curiosity have led him all over the world. A few decades back, David discovered folding bicycles and since then he's ridden his bicycle along the side and back roads of many cities, riding, thinking, chatting, living life and seeing how it's lived in a wide range of places. His view of the world seen from a bicycle saddle gives him "glimpses into the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in." Now, his meditations on people, places and the various ways we get along and get around are collected in his new book, Bicycle Diaries. Bicycle Diaries is the best kind of art, a work that brings the reader along on the artist's journey. Bicycle Diaries is a physically beautiful book, hardcover with no dust-jacket, yellow embossed letters cheerfully identify the title and author while a black silhouette of a rider draws the reader forward. An observant reader will notice a tiny bicycle peeking out from the spine at the bottom of page 11 and on each odd page thereafter the bicycle has makes more progress. Fanning forward through the pages sets the tiny typeset bicycle free, racing across the pages in the oldest style animation, persistent vision holding tight to the bike while the pages blur past. Ever the artist, be it in music, lyric, print, or type, David remembers that a book can be more than just a file on a Kindle. The tiny animation is just one example of the playful digressiveness of this book. While he casts a loving and critical look at the world, David is always conversational. He ponders, rants, muses and marvels. He reflects on how our cities reflect our minds. We build what we value, but our shaped world shapes those values. In an age where it seems that every celebrity has a publicist and a book that screams "look at me", David is instead riding his bike down interesting streets and pausing now and then to say "Hey, look at that!" He profiles interesting buildings, streets, people, cities and artists. He's structured the book as a series of chapters each concentrating on a city such as Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Sydney or New York, but the book is not a mere travelogue. In Manila, he uses the life story of Imelda Marcos as a springboard for contemplation of the way we each build the mythic stories of our lives. In Buenos Aires he considers geography, faith, death, music, art, unemployment, sex, the pack behavior of dogs, politics, football, gentrification, nightlife, and worker ownership. In every place he rides, he finds the unique and the common and connects the local with the global. Bicycle Diaries is an intensely human and humane book, a book that echoes in print the sense of "My God, how did I get here?" that David expressed years ago in the Talking Heads. To an interesting person like David, all places are interesting and he consistently reminds us just how interesting humans are. We are the ones building the human world --