David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress, Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep time Journey

Wittgenstein's Mistress was one single stream of consciousness from the last surviving human on the planet. She was an unreliable narrator of course, and presumably mad, although how much was true and how much her fantasy is not clear. 'Underland' has had fabulous reviews and Robert Macfarlane gets a lot of praise on Twitter, but I didn't like it at all. Possibly I'm just too familiar now with the genre and have turned cynical. It's vicarious nature writing for the urban, urbane reader who wants to be at one with nature, receiving profound wisdom and a better lifestyle from communing with an unspoilt environment. all the charcarters met in these books are poets, or immensely talented musicians or craftsmen, as well as being world authorities on caving, or fungi, or tidal erosion, as well as living in windmills or on boats or in a hammock in a mountain cave. It's all wish-fulfilment tosh and what remains unsaid about all these characters (who are undoubtedly exaggerated and had their potted biographies very carefully curated), is that they are only able to live these lives because they have massive trust funds or made a fortune in the city at Daddy's bank.