The Wisdom of Donkeys

Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World

By: Andy Merrifield

Narrated by: Peter Johnson

Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

"The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance...and slowness with memory and confronting," observes Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness.

With that purpose in mind - a search for slowness and tranquility - Andy Merrifield sets out on a journey of the soul with a friend's donkey, Gribouille, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne. As Merrifield contemplates literature, science, truth, and beauty amid the French countryside, Gribouille surprises him with his subtle wisdom, reminding him time and again that enlightenment is all around us if we but seek it.

©2008 Andy Merrifield (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Love

A must listen. I purchased the hard copy as well. My adult kids will get this for Christmas

Lovely Text

This text was a wonderful look into the history and inner “workings” of an endearing creature, the donkey. I wish that there had been a different narrator as this one did not bring to the text what it deserved. It was read as a though it was a newspaper listing rather than the thoughtful perspective of the author.

Eternal Wisdom

I had a hard time getting started but like most things I should read and hear,it was worth the effort. Too late for me to get a donkey but not too late to internalize the wisdom.

definitely donkey wisdom

this book is so very interesting to anyone interested in learning about doggies and a little bit about France. I'm not sure if the narrator was chosen on purpose for the monotone.. you know to seem like a donkey.. but it was very difficult to listen to this story with so little expression.. if there was any in the reader's voice. I'm going to actually buy the book and print so I can read it to myself! with feeling!😎

Very 'meh'

I love donkeys, I love travelogues, I love books about unusual journeys taken on foot. So you'd think I was the perfect audience for this book. But it didn't really succeed. There are some interesting facts about donkeys provided, although the facts come with a hefty side of philosophizing about their natures. Or observations like "there is something tremendously democratic about a donkeys tail" and then some nonsense about Andrew Jackson.

As a travelogue it is oddly non-specific. He is in France, specifically Auvergne, but we don't get a lot of detail about where exactly he is and how long he is gone for. I mean, people write books all the time about leaving the city to get away from the noise and the frenetic pace. The author is leaving behind NYC and London but is his journey with donkey a months' long pilgrimage, a single month's long or just a few days? If the reader were to find herself inspired by the journey and want to imitate it, how would she do this? What exactly is their route? Here I remember reading a book about a man who does the Camino de Santiago with a donkey. Maybe I should go back to that book?

Anyway, donkeys in and of themselves are more awesome than this book.

boring

Written in prose style the author goes on forever about the settings of his environments that has nothing to do with donkeys. One of the most boring books I have ever read.