No comments about What's in a Picture?: Broiler Queens, Floating Houses, and Other Hidden Stories in Vintage Maine Photographs.

No comments about Scenic Driving New England, 2nd (Scenic Driving Series).

1 comments about Boston Sites and Insights: An Essential Guide to Historic Landmarks In and Around Boston.

1. I got this book because I need it for a class, but I actually started reading it before the class started. It's a great book to give you the basic info about a lot of popular and historic places in Boston. Each site has about 4 pages of info, including websites, phone numbers, and other tourist info. I wish I had known about this before my senior year of college in Boston.

5 comments about Discover Acadia National Park, 2nd: AMC Guide to the Best Hiking, Biking, and Paddling (AMC Discover Series).

1. Good book, but very general in nature. We didn't paddle or bike. We only hiked. The included, weatherproof map is a great asset. The hiking descriptions were brief, but accurate. I would recommend this book to anyone who is new to Acadia and wants to explore with a minimum of guidance. If you are specifically going to hike and do some very fun peak bagging, buy the Acadia Trail map in Bar Harbor.



2. You are not going to Acadia to bag another national park; you are not driving hundreds of miles just to drive up another mile to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, or to take a tour bus to the popover capital of the universe, Jordan Pond House. No. You are going there to bike your buns off. You're taking your kayak to feel the salty Atlantic spray in your face. You are going to bag Acadia's peaks the old fashioned way, by hiking up. You are going to need the Appalachian Mountain Club's book, "Discover Acadia National Park, Second Edition." You are going to need the pocket-sized map inside the back cover, and when your trip is over and you put it back in its sleeve, it's going to be dog-eared and wet. Your souvenir will be your sunburn; you'll do Acadia your way.
   
   Cycling
   Most of you will bike, it's the national sport here. The carriage paths (so called because John D. Rockefeller Jr. had them constructed for horse-drawn carriages), criss-cross the entire park, including the high elevation parts with the best views. When the AMC classifies the "Around The Mountain Loop" as "Difficult," you can expect to perspire a little. But honestly, the AMC tends to exaggerate a little. That "Around the Mountain Loop" isn't going to take you anything like 4 hours; it's going to take 2.5 hours at most. That 4 hour estimate is going to give you time to change a flat tire. And the Eagle Lake Loop will take a fit novice 50 minutes, not 2 hours.
   
   Kayaking
   The freshwater kayak excursions are very popular, but you didn't drive hundreds of miles to the Maine coast to paddle in ponds. Okay, loosen up in Eagle Lake, but eventually you're going to want to paddle Frenchman's Bay, The Porcupine Islands, or Somes Sound. Look a seal in the eye; photograph a humpback whale surfacing nearby for air. The seals are locals (notice their distinctive pronunciation), but the whales are tourists like you; say "Hi," and ask `em where they're from.
   
   Hiking
   Many of the hiking trails described in this book are fabulous, but some are forgettable. On a nice day there are literally a thousand people on Cadillac Mountain's one acre summit, half of them jockeying for parking spaces. The National Park Service needs to close the summit road so that the only access is by hiking or biking. Unfortunately this book doesn't indicate which destinations are accssible only with perspiration. Do try the Penobscot and Sergeant Mountain Trail, The Western Mountains - Mansell and Bernard, and The Peak Baggers' Delight. Actually any part of the Western Peninsula is going to be better hiking than the Eastern Peninsula; it's simply less explored.
   
   Nor should you neglect the book's shaded boxes on topics like whales, lichens, the boreal forest, moose, and loons. You are there to take it all in, not to speed past things you'll seldom be able cozy up to again.
   
   And take a little zip lock freezer bag to keep that little map dry. It's extremely helpful to gain access to the park's attractions, but it's a little fragile, and you're going to want it to stay intact in order to find your way out.



3. Unless you're just there for a day or two to do the driving tour, you'll find good use for this guide and map. In fact, the map alone is worth the price. For example, you'll find parking areas that aren't indicated on the NPS map; no small advantage for visitors to this often crowded park. Another plus, the book has well organized trail charts to use in choosing your outing. And finally, there are descriptions of natural history to help you appreciate the ecology of the park. We found nothing inaccurate in the map or trail descriptions, but it must be noted that we sampled only a small portion of the trips described in the book. And I must add, if you are planning a trip to Acadia and have two reasonably well-functioning legs, make sure you get yourself out on a bike on the carriage paths. I don't know that you can get a cycling experience like that anywhere else.



4. Because our trip focused on hiking and bicycling, this book was perfect. We didn't paddle, but the hikes and bike rides were well-described. Because this is not a general guide like the Moon book, more space can be dedicated to these activities. The appendices and index were a nice touch. Although the book comes with the paper version of the wonderful AMC Hiking, Biking and Paddling Map, I'd highly recommend buying the separate tyvec version, as it is more durable. You'll use the AMC map almost exclusively because it has all the hiking trails, the carriage roads, the regular roads, and the shuttle bus stops.



5. Just returned from our 2nd Annual Bar Harbor trip. This book is extremely helpful and accurate. We've used the majority of hiking and biking trails with this book, but no kayak trips yet. Totally recommend!

No comments about Massachusetts Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities, & Other Offbeat Stuff (Curiosities Series).

2 comments about A Time Before New Hampshire: The Story of a Land and Native Peoples.

1. I feel lucky to have found this, and at such a great price! The book was perfect, and the arrival time more than prompt.



2. Among other things I do, I sell fossils and minerals part time, and at an agricultural fair this past summer, my friend Gary lent me his copy of this book. I can not tell you what a pleasure it has been reading this work. The book covers from earliest geological times through the 1700's. Michael Caduto has done an excellent job of outlining all facets of NH history as best it can be reconstructed without benefit of written cultural history. If I could, I would give this book 5 stars for a fascinating read, 5 stars for creating a believable description of what life was like for our native peoples, and 5 stars for the resource information at the back of the book, which includes listings of NH museums, native language pronunciation, wildlife present during the times described, and so on. Thank you Gary for a great read, and, even more, thank you Michael, for all your extensive research on the subject.

5 comments about Vermont Covered Bridges Map & Guide.

1. On medium-weight, stain-resistant paper, this beautiful and durable map folds out to approximately 2 feet by 3 feet. On one side is a three-color map of Vermont placing all 107 of the state's covered bridges, interesting facts about bridges and their designers, separate indices for bridges and places, and labelled watercolors of 23 of the bridges. The reverse side shows a county map, line drawings of various types of bridge trusses and a list of all the state's covered bridges by town. Each entry gives the date the bridge was built, information about its design and construction, and directions to the bridge.

   This is a beautiful and informative map, and what a bargain!




2. Just returned from a week in Vermont and this map/guide saved me a lot of time and effort in tracking down the covered bridges I wanted to see in Northern Vermont.



3. I found this map of Vermont covered bridges only moderately helpful. The map has a symbol for covered bridges on it and directions to each bridge are located on the back of the map by region, along with a very brief history. I found having to flip the map over for directions very user unfriendly while trying to navigate.



4. This product is exactly what it's supposed to be: a comprehensive map to covered bridges in Vermont.



5. My husband and I went to Vermont for the first time in October. With this map and the book " Covered Bridges of Vermont" we were able to easily find and photograph 30 of the 107 covered bridges in the state. I highly recommend this product.

5 comments about Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (National Geographic Directions).

1. London looms large, in literature, in "real" life, and in the literary and cultural imagination. In this delightfully absorbing book, Quindlen, a former New York Times columnist, describes her first introduction to London-through books-and her second-on a book tour trip. She admits that she was fearful of shattering the magical image she held of London, and so put off a visit to the actual city for years. Only in her mid-forties did Quindlen finally make the trip, and she was relieved to discover that its charms and quirks were even better than she had imagined.
   
   The chapters are loosely connected, with witty gems that regular readers of Quindlen will expect. She alludes to the great writers who have lived in London, suggests out-of-the-way detours about the city, and reflects on the present-day capital of the United Kingdom.
   
   If a reader expects the author to provide sound-bite sidebars and details about where to eat and stay, he or she will be vastly disappointed and probably not make it beyond the first few pages. But if you've been to London and loved it, or if you have read Thackery and Dickens, Henry James and Monica Ali, you'll revel in this literary tour. Quindlen's rich narrative style will have you, like it did me, looking for airline tickets for another visit to this amazing city. Don't forget to pack this book along with anything by Dickens.



2. I had such high hopes for a book that got to the heart of my favorite city and my favorite literature. However, first it dismayed, then depressed, then just made me plain angry that Ms. Quindlen could be so superficial, so full of cliches, have such shallow skills of description and so absolutely little insight into either London or literature. Surely someone soon will pick up the inky scratches and try again.



3. i love anna quindlen, i love literature, i love landscapes of the imagination, and i love london, so i was ready to love this book. however, it didn't give me nearly the depth i wanted. the essays are oddly generic, the comments oddly superficial. i was left with little impression, literary or geographical. i'm sad.



4. There is so much more to the imaginary London than the author conveys. This book feels like it was dictated to complete an assignment. Buy the Ackroyd book, London: A Biography instead...and then use your own imagination. I agree with previous reviewers who called it superficial with the real book still waiting for an author to write it.



5. There is so much written about London that a book this short can only say so much. For those of us that already know London very well (the real place as well as the fictional) we learn more from this book about Ms.Quindlen and her limited life experience than anything else. In London she wanders the well worn tourist trail and has nothing new to say, it's interesting to hear her well read tourist's perceptions of the city, although that is, in the end, all they are.
   Most of her literary references are to classic nineteenth and early twentieth century novels thus limiting her scope to the aforesaid well trod trail. Very little contemporary fiction is mentioned. No childrens literature, no gay fiction, nothing that couldn't be considered 'serious literature' is referenced. Where is the London of P.L Travers, Zoe Heller, Paul Burston, Hanif Kureishi, Will Self, Alan Hollinghurst or David Baddiel to name a few ?
   The section on the Borough is irritatingly packed full of factual inaccuracies such as her reference to the 'Little Dorrit Church' as though that was it's name (it is actually the church of St.George the Martyr and predates the novel by more than a century although this book gives the impression that it is a church commemorating a fictional character; there is a window depicting Little Dorrit there, but no-one locally refers to it as the 'Little Dorrit Church'); this section sounds as though she spent an afternoon in the area and did very little research, she omits to describe anything in the area such as the wall next to the church that is possibly the last remnant of the Marshalsea so I am suspicious as to whether she even went there. If she is interested in Dickens, and I understand from reading this book that she is, there were far more interesting places to have written about such as the site of the blacking factory at Hungerford stairs, which is now Hungerford Lane and is the entrance to 'The Soundshaft' a club underneath Charing Cross station ; or she could have gone to 'The Grapes' in Limehouse to the pub described in 'Our Mutual Friend', but as I have said her scope is as limited as the average tourist with their free tourist map of "Historic and Literary London". I found it very frustrating as there were so many places that I could have shown her that I'm sure she would have been interested in. She did the usual London tourist thing of barely venturing outside Zone 1. There is so much she is missing.

5 comments about Walking to Canterbury: A Modern Journey Through Chaucer's Medieval England.

1. Walking to Canterbury is a lyrical journey by foot from London to Canterbury. The marriage of history, adventure and soul in this book, spiced with medieval illustrations, is a delight from the first page. I read it for my book club and the discussion that followed among ten of us was a treasure.



2. I have to take exception to most of the other reviews. Please hear me out.
   
   The author, a man of Native American and English heritage, wrote an earlier book, Walking the Trail, about a several month walk tracing the infamous Cherokee "Trail of Tears" backward from Oklahoma to his home in northeast Alabama, as well as two other books tracing historic American routes. Mr. Ellis says his trip to England to follow the medieval Christian pilgrims' route from London to Canterbury Cathedral, described most famously by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, was an effort to connect with his English heritage. I finished the book concluding that Ellis' so-called pilgrimage was just a way to provide his publisher with a sequel to sell based on the reputation and success of Ellis' earlier writing.
   
   For someone supposedly seeking to understand his English roots Mr. Ellis invests minuscule effort in the process. He commits only nine days to his first trip to England: arrives in London, departs the next day a seven-day, 70-odd mile walk, spends the last night in Canterbury, then returns to London by train to catch a flight back to the U.S. Such a short trip can't provide enough material for 295 pages, so Ellis pads the book with flashbacks to his Trail of Tears walk plus a lot of material about medieval English history, customs, daily life and English and non-English Christian practices. Some of the historic material consists of pages-long quotes from other books. Mind you, the historic extracts can be interesting, but there are better sources for such things and the book's subtitle promised "a modern journey through Chaucer's medieval England."
   
   Ellis focuses on some fairly odd people for someone saying he wants to get in touch with his English heritage. His most significant encounters are with unemployed, spike-haired, slackers and their pet iguana (he actually tarries an extra day to party with them), Swedish, French and Dutch tourists, an Iranian immigrant and several bar tenders. No significant encounters with farmers, police officers or teachers. And certainly none with Christians.
   
   Ellis' walk is hardly a religious pilgrimage. His own beliefs are Native American/New Age (i.e., deifying created objects rather than a Creator) and he expresses scant respect for Christianity. On one occasion Ellis hurts his back when he trips in the forest and experiences excruciating pain. That night, seemingly for the first time, in desperation he prays for relief. The next morning he experiences a self-described miraculous healing. Then, rather than credit God for healing him, and perhaps seeing the occurrence as "a sign" to repent and complete the trip as a true pilgrimage of thanksgiving as medieval Christians would have, Ellis quickly explains away his healing as a fluke.
   
   Ellis encounters some New Age tourists from Holland. They are lead by a Dutchman calling himself Geronimo who, for unexplained reasons, came from Amsterdam to England to practice some half-baked version of Native American spirituality in an attempt to relieve urban angst. Ellis writes: "Geronimo's teaching Native American spirituality when he has no such heritage disturbed me." But a few pages later non-Christian Ellis perceives no hypocrisy in himself when he arrives in Canterbury and, among secular visitors there to see the historic building and its art, makes a spectacle of himself by ascending the Cathedral steps on his knees in imitation of a pious Christian pilgrim. Afterward Ellis celebrates the conclusion of his "pilgrimage" at a bar where people mock Christian heritage, then leaves early the next day to rush back to Alabama.
   
   Ellis is a bit of an odd traveler, to boot. He lugs a 40 pound backpack of camping gear and spends a third of his nights in a tent in the semi-rural landscape, sort of like camping in the suburbs while walking from New York City to someplace in Connecticut. And he cooks on campfires several times at historic sites and just off the road in scraps of forest and farmers' fields. I've made walking tours in the British Isles and can tell you people just don't do that sort of thing; most people don't build campfires anymore when they hike in the U.S. One bit of quaintness - the trip occurred in 1999 - is Ellis talking about the great pocket knife he always carries and uses to carve figures in his oak walking stick. Ahhhh, pocket knives.... remember when we were allowed to carry those when we traveled in the good old days before 9-11?
   
   I don't recommend this book. The stories aren't that good and you can easily find better sources about the history of Canterbury or medieval England. I bought it because I enjoy making and reading about both Christian and secular pilgrimages, but this isn't, to my disappointment, really a pilgrimage book.
   
   Walking to Canterbury includes a small scale sketch map of the route, some small black-and-white reproductions of medieval scenes, a three-page bibliography of sources used for the historic extracts and a grainy photo of the author.



3. This investigation of modern and medieval England is done in a lively hands-on approach by the author in a unique way, as he walks the route of Chaucer's piligrims. A real pilgrimage route in the Middle Ages, the reader feels that he is there every step of the way. If you like adventure, heart, soul, humor and history, you'll love this journey.



4. I am partial to travel commentaries. The best ones have history and sociology lessons embedded in a moving narrative with rapidly changing settings and characters. The author's role is indispensible for he must impose a theme on his trip and package it engagingly for the reader. Jerry Ellis does this quite well. He treks from London to Canterbury along the 60 mile route established in medieval times. The cathedral where Becket was murdered has been drawing pilgrims for centuries. Ellis is of English as well as Cherokee ancestry and this jaunt was intended to lend symmetry to his work since he had earlier walked and written about the Trail of Tears.
   
   You will not enjoy this book unless you have interest in the lifestyles of twelfth century pilgrims. After a few pages of contemporary narrative, Ellis hears something to remind him of ancient ways and the reader knows he's in for a history lesson. However, they are appropriate, informative and quite interesting. Clearly, more time was spent reading the three dozen books in his bibliography than was frittered away in the south of England.
   
   The author uses the novelty of his trek to positively engage people and his interactions tend to be significant- perhaps too meaningful by intention. (He is on a religious pilgrimage.) Of course, he is of the "big tent" religion, and actively seeks parallels between Christian ways and the Cherokee beliefs. Some unifying observations are quite touching.
   
   I found it remarkable that Ellis could find spots to regularly pitch a tent and build a campfire. Evidently, once you are out of London the city ends and woodlands and wheatfields prevail. I can't imagine a pedestrian being so fortunate around any American city. Our less restrictive zoning extends the city for miles along our routes of egress. If Ellis were to make a pilgrimage out of New York, his campsites would likely be threatened by cranky suburbanites and dozens of state, county, village, environmental and parkway police for 60 miles in any direction. To bad he didn't write a bit about land use...



5. This only mildly interesting book weaves tales of the author's 1999 walk from London to Canterbury with English history and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
   
   Despite a potentially interesting premise and loads of unusual historical facts to link past and present, the author's ego distracts throughout the book; however it does get to a point where it's almost comical rather than irritating. He's just a bit too dramatic and evidently has had more Very Deep Thoughts and Mystical Life Experiences than the rest of us mere mortals. After a while Professor Lockhart from the 'Harry Potter' books started springing to mind whenever the author's commentary would circle back -- as it always did -- to himself and his mystical insights.
   
   Overall, it's a quick and easy read and I found the historical portions of the book interesting. Frankly, I was rather surprised that one *could* still walk from London to Canterbury on suburban and country roads. However, after reading this, I'd rather walk with someone else.

No comments about You Know You're in New Hampshire When...: 101 Quintessential Places, People, Events, Customs, Lingo, and Eats of the Granite State (You Know You're In Series).