No comments about Massachusetts: An Explorer's Guide: The North Shore, Central Massachusetts, and the Berkshires, Third Edition.

1 comments about Southern New Hampshire Trail Guide: Hiking Trails in Southern New Hampshire.

1. The Appalachian Mountain Club is a New England Based hiking organization, that has blazed and hiked trails repeatedly through the Northeast part of the country. This expertise is evident in this guide, which covers southern New Hampshire most notably Mount Monadnock (the most hiked mountain in the world behind Fuji) and Mount Cardigan.

   Precise routes, historical interest and ways to avoid heavy foot traffic are mentioned here. The best part is the foldout map with Monadnock on the front and Cardigan on the back. You will never get a more detailed trail map.

   This is truly the quintessential guide for anyone who wants to hike this region of New Hampshire....I also recommend the other guide books for the state. Really excellent, comprehensive.

No comments about Nature Walks along the Seacoast: Southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Northern Massachusetts.

5 comments about Lonely Planet London.

1. I used this book for a five-day trip to London, my first time there. It was very helpful, contained just the right amount of information, and gave useful suggestions of what to do with my limited time. I was a little disappointed with the lack of budget accomodations included in the book (hence the four stars instead of five) but otherwise, all of the recommendations I followed were great.



2. I went to London for about 5 days. A lot of this book was out of date, such as ticket prices for admission to tourist attractions and opening times). Since this edition was published in January 2006, I would recommend a more recent guidebook.
   
   The restaurant recommendations were more upscale than I was hoping for. A place described as Italian with mains costing 7-p pounds actually turned out to be a Mediterranean tapas place and ending up costing 40 pounds per person. I would agree with a previous review that the accomodations were a bit pricier than I was looking for and had better luck finding a place online. I gave it two stars because I did find a nice, traditional pub to hang out in that I went back to multiple nights.
   
   Cross referencing attractions would have been nice - if you looked for a certain subject in the index, it could be spread across 3 different pages (ie. pg 11, 213, 77). I spent a lot of time during my trip with my nose in this book, and I had even flipped through it beforehand! (it took me 2 hours to decide on the inexpensive "Italian" restaurant).
   
   The Walking Tours were ok, but I got the feeling I was missing a lot of things as I followed the maps in the book. I also got lost a lot, which may or may not could be attributed to the book (my travel companions are still laughing about it).
   
   I was so unhappy with this book, I purposefully left it in my rented flat in London. Choose another guidebook.



3. . The information about the history of London was Ok.
   . Ok with the walking tour
   . All the highlights and backdoor are inside this guide
   
   BUT...looking with a backpacker eyes..
   
   . They should reduce the big restaurant list and make a better explanation of the highlights is the sight section.
   
   Just for your information, I love Lonely Planet...this is a constructive recommendation that I give to all the city guides...
   
   Another important thing, specially for what they call "A city guide"...they should give more information (map and path) of the buses. Yes...it is not Paris...in London it is easy to find a map for the buses...free of charge...BUT ...I am paying more that US$15 for a city guide, man...they should include.
   
   So, I think, less restaurant and better transport and sight information.



4. I normally have no complaints about Lonely Planet books - I've used them repeatedly. The London book is good with great maps, descriptions, directions, and updated admission costs and times, however, I found two things below my expectations: While the maps are good, this edition did not list supermarkets as most other Lonely Planet books do. (When touring on foot as I normally do, I like stopping in to a supermarket for a quick snack or drink - usually quicker and less expensive than going to a restaurant.) The other feature I found confusing is listing sights outside of London proper with no directions on how to get there. If I wanted sights outside of London, I'd had bought the Britain edition! If excursions outside the city are listed, it would help to see how to get there and an indication of how long it would take to get there, so one can plan an itinerary.



5. This guide gives all the right information, not too much and not too little, as well as good maps. I liked the maps this guide gives better than the "London A to Z" map, at least from a tourist's perspective.

5 comments about A Scientific Romance: A Novel.

1. First the concept - A man with an uncurable disease, discovers a time machine created by an associate of H.G. Wells. He decides to go to the future to seek a cure.

   Unfortunately the writing style to this book was excrutiatingly boring, written in the first person. The narrator (the man with the incurable disease) jumps from concept to concept, without anything interesting to say. There is virtually no action. When he gets to the future, everything is destroyed and you keep waiting for him to encounter people, which never seems to happen. I found H.G. Wells Time Machine to be vastly more interesting and that was written over 100 years ago.

   Many other readers have given this book very high marks for writing and I wonder how they can? I know I kept finding myself skipping over a lot of paragraphs throughout the book and had to fight with myself to keep from just jumping to the back of the book and reading the end so I could get on with it.




2. This is an interesting concept novel used to drive home a point about technology and scientific hubris run rampant that eventually chokes our planet and all but destroys the human race.

   In 1999 David Lambert, really a rather wandering soul, is a museum curator who has lost the love of his life to Mad Cow disease and his best friend in a falling out over a nasty love triangle involving the same woman. Unbelievably a letter falls into his hands that purports to be from H.G. Wells informing the reader of the return of the time machine to London-a fiction that turns out not to be fiction. So off he goes on his jaunt into the future.

   This is a poor attempt at using the time travel concept as a plot device. There are just way too many coincidences and way too many convenient plot devices to move the story along. And it drags on unrelentlessly in the middle with some very tedious slogging as the author gets carried away over describing the future he finds.

   At times, the novel is very good and it does have some merit. But frankly, the plot devices used, especially in the end, undermine the novel.




3. David Lambert, museum curator and lonely man, finds out that H.G. Wells's novel about a Time Machine was based on a real machine. He finds the machine and throws himself 500 years into the future. Why? Well, he has his reasons.
   What does he find? Mostly he seems to find pieces of his own past as he explores the ruins of mankind's future. Yes, ruins. Something went wrong, very wrong. And now David tries to find out what went wrong as at the same time he tries to find answers to his own ruined life.
   For a first time novel this is a GREAT first. I hope to see more novels from this author.



4. Silly title, absorbing novel. I was disappointed by the ending - it was unmemorable, which is why I don't now recall what it was - but I was impressed with the structure of the work, the imagination, and the subtle political message (something like "Don't let global warming destroy our world!"). I didn't want to put it down, and the first thing I did when I finally (too soon) reached the end was to order Wright's next novel. Which means I admire the author lots.



5. The Wells time machine premise is great. The archaeological theme is handled well. The first 125 pages or so are pretty absorbing. Then it takes a dive. More and more of the same maddeningly slow-moving journal entries, mostly describing the greenery (though I did like Graham). You think it's going to get back up to speed or at least offer more than the narrator continuing to mourn lost love, lost friendship, lost parents -- but even when things actually begin to happen around page 221, it's not nearly as interesting as the first part of the book. A wasted opportunity.

No comments about Along the Mohawk Trail: A Feast of Fall Foliage and Spectacular Hill Towns (Pathways to the Past in Western Massachusetts).

No comments about Special Places: Pubs & Inns of England & Wales, 5th (Special Places Pubs & Inns of England & Wales).

No comments about The Primal Place.

1 comments about Streetwise Northern New England Map - Laminated Area Road Map of Northern New England - Folding pocket size travel map.

1. very small type, of course, but great for getting a general idea of where everything is in relation to one another

3 comments about Holkham.

1. I never received the book! How can I review it?
   Kindest regards
   Edoardo Greppi



2. An exceptionally well written account of the building, builders, and custodians of a magnificent piece of history. Would that this sense of stewardship were more widespread.
   
   Enjoy.



3. This is a very good book on a fascinating family and a grand estate. Holkham is without doubt one of the grandest of the non royal estates, it really is quite a stack of stones. The history makes the house all the more interesting. The images in this book are very good and the text is very well researched. A must have!