No comments about Guide to Martha's Vineyard, 11th (Guide to Martha's Vineyard).

1 comments about Scene of the Crime: A Guide to the Landscapes of British Detective Fiction.

1. i think i came across this in a catalogue - but found it cheaper through amazon. first i checked it out from the library, then liked it so well, that i bought my own copy so that i could take my time with it; take notes, etc. there are great pictures of the places and lots of information on names of authors and books that go with specific places you can visit in the uk. we took a trip there last year, and really enjoy reading books that take place in some of the places we visited. it's well-written and packed full of interesting stuff. i'm making it sound dry, but it isn't. there is a bit of history, a bit of biography, and a bit of travelogue and it's all written so well, that it is very compelling. i didn't want to put it down.

No comments about Backroad Bicycling in New Hampshire: The Best Routes for Road and Mountain Bikes in the Granite State.

1 comments about An Island Sheltered: Shelter Island Celebrates 350 Years.

1. This book is really interresting. I am from the Island, so I can add to some of the info. I think it is missing a lot of really important land marks though. I know for a fact of at least 3 buildings in the Heights that should be noted and weren't even mentioned. Some of which are over 100 years old! All in all, it's an interresting book, but needs some more beefing up.

5 comments about The Rings of Saturn.

1. Sebald is an archaeologist of loss. In this book, tied together by a barely-fictionalized account of a walking tour of the Suffolk coast, he starts with cultural detritus that would be beneath the notice of most travel writers and reaches into his reading of history and literature, his chilhood memories, even his dreams, to weave a complex elegy to vanished civilizations. Although there are fewer of the grainy photographs which give other Sebald books a documentary air, this one is closer to a straight memoir than any of the four that I have read. But its geography is less of a place than of the author's extraordinary mind: its mountains map the barren wilderness of wanton destruction; its rivers chart the forces of commercialism, colonial exploitation, and greed which are its cause. Yet the book is also illuminated by Sebald's humility, his curiosity, and his delight in the human capacity for joyful obsession, whether it be Chateaubriand's love for an English vicar's daughter, or a Suffolk farmer who spent thirty years building a model of the Temple of Jerusalem in his barn.



2. This is a most unusual novel. In fact, many might be reluctant to even term it a novel.
   
   Whatever one decides to call it, it is a most curious, enlightening and entertaining experience.
   
   The novel, since he chose to term it such, is an account of a walking tour the late author took through England's East Anglia, his home for some 20 years and where he taught at university.
   
   The novel recounts his experiences (perhaps fictionalized), the people he encounters--most of them remarkable for their eccentricities--and his thoughts along the way, which include dreams, memories, Britain's pastoral and imperial past. There are dissertations on China and the Opium Wars, herring fisheries and the introduction of the silk industry to Britain.
   
   In addition, there are great swaths of comment on an assortment of historical figures--Thomas Browne, Edward FitzGerald, the poet Swinburne, Chateaubriand and Joseph Conrad, to name a few. And, scattered throughout the book, are a collection of photographs, some not quite in focus and adding to the dreamlike quality of the text.
   
   Whether you consider it a novel or not, you are certain to come away with much to think about for days after you've read the last page.



3. It takes a unique mind to create a book like this one, an extended walking tour along the eastern coast of England that turns into a series of stories, digressions about Dutch art, Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement, the persistence of Belgium's dark colonial past, the Taiping Rebellion, the decline of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the development of the silk industry, and many other things. At first these multiple stories seem random, but Sebald gradually reveals the connections between these disparate places and times. It also becomes clear that Sebald is drawn to contemplate human destructiveness, natural decay and eccentric individuals. He is exceptionally observant and his dominant tone is melancholy. These elegiac ruminations and memories will certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, and I found myself wondering if this part of England is really as desolate and sad as Sebald makes it seem. Nevertheless he has an ability to create a mood and an atmosphere like few other writers.



4. 
   I read this book and was at first pleasantly surprised. This book
   is like stepping into the aftermath of a profound dream which has finished way after you first discover it. This is a great book for "literary types" like me but I think many readers will struggle with it. It also helps if you know a lot of historical stuff. I don't and I was
   really struggling to understand a lot of what the author was talking about at points and I got very confused. Sebald is a brilliant man but
   like another reviewer pointed out he needs a better editor. I like this book but it needs something extra to push it from being good to being
   brilliant. But what do I know.
   
   John



5. Sebald takes a walk in Suffolk. He sees places and things, and remembers people and books, and thinks of history. This triggers reflections on natural, social and cultural decay, on human greed and callousness, on inhuman monstrosities.
   It goes like this: he is in Lowestoft, the easternmost city of England, in an area that is depressed and that had a somewhat more glorious past. Fisheries, shipping, shipbuilding have all declined dramatically, actually all but disappeared. Joseph Conrad had lived there for a while. Off we go into a part biography of Konrad Korzeniowski, up until he experiences the heart of darkness and walks out of his job in the Congo. We learn about colonialism's darkest sides, then the narration shifts, like a relay baton, to Roger Casement, who had been British Consul in the Congo and who blew the whistle on the practices, of course to no avail. But the man proceeded to do the same in his next post in the Amazon area and ended up siding with the white Indians of Ireland, which earned him a death sentence and a hanging for treason.
   Sebald walked South and at the river Blyth he saw the narrow gauge railway track, of the train that had been made for an emperor of China, but had not been delivered, so it runs in Southwold now ('now' being early 1990s). So off we go: into the last decades of the doomed and inefficient and callous Qing dynasty, with the picture book Empress Dowager, back to the British infamy of the Opium Wars, the tremendous upheaval of the Taiping Rebellion, the massacres and famines.
   There is more of course. There is the walking itself, the country and sea, the people met. And more stories, my two examples are just the ones that interested me most (a. Conrad, b.China).
   The headline quote is from Thomas Browne, of the 17th century. Other authors that are woven into the narrative of the walk, either by their life or by their work, are Kafka, Flaubert, Diderot, Levi-Strauss, Borges, Stendhal, Swinburne, Hoelderlin, Grimmelshausen, Omar Quayam, Chateaubriand ...
   This is maybe the most bookish 'travel book' that I have found. Maybe it is not for everyone, but for me it is just right.

1 comments about Maine Fishing Depth Maps.

1. DeLorme has come out with a great new publication that is a must have for serious anglers. The 215 page, loose-ring book contains more than 1,700 fishing depth maps of Maine lakes and ponds by counties. There is also stocking information, fish species of each body of water, and location coordinates. This book is long overdue, and is remarkably priced. In fact, if you bought all of these maps from the Fish and Wildlife folks, one map at a time, the price would be prohibitive

1 comments about Vermont Street & Road Atlas (American Map).

1. I liked the binding of the book, it was easy to keep open on the seat next to me. The real problem with it is the lack of dinstinction beween types of roads, dirt or pavement. This makes a big difference when you are driving in Vermont.

No comments about The PIP Travel Photography Guide to England (Travel Photography Guide).

No comments about Boston Off the Beaten Path, 2nd (Off the Beaten Path Series).

1 comments about BOSTON POCKET GUIDE, 3rd Edition.

1. I bought this guide because I didn't want to lug around anything heavy and that couldn't fit in my pocket while walking around the city. Berlitz did a really nice job providing key information and a good overview of Boston for travelers.