1 comments about Paris and Elsewhere (New York Review Books Classics).

1. This collection of Cobb's essays is another book in the NYRB series which I did not want to finish reading. These essays are about more than Paris or Normandy or even Europe; here is a record left by an Englishman who passionately loved a place, a bi-cultural historian and writer who grew his soul between the rare archived records of France and the living streets he loved.
   
   Richard Cobb has shown me that writing a memoir of place is a sensory experience. His essays are so rich in textured intimacy that I feel "le Cobb" is living still. One can find him strolling down an avenue observing every alteration of the weather, every change in the pavement, in the passersby, their clothing and language. I imagine Cobb still sitting in his favorite haunt, the late night and early morning caf?, sipping the 4:00 a.m. calvados, or apple brandy, as he watches the barges come up the river. From his youth, to his late travels, Cobb had found that one cannot write history without knowing the living. Le Cobb called himself a "prisoner of habit" (301), and this, I believe, is the key to the depth of detail in his writing. He frequented the same places, the same towns, kept in touch with the same French and Belgian friends. But there is also something exquisitely lonely about Cobb, the solitary observer, that appeals to the wounded romantic in every traveler.
   
   I'm concerned that the general reader will not pick up this book; the density of language in Paris and Elsewhere appears to be for the intimate specialist only. But the essays are about desire for a place, about human interaction in that space, how people create each other's lives, and the anger and grief one feels when a beloved city or village is altered forever--phenomena and feelings which anyone can apply to anyplace in the world. I highly recommend this book for people involved in city planning, the New Urbanists, any reader wondering why the French no longer wear berets, or any reader looking for a context or background as to how or why the recent riots and rebellions occurred across France in the past year.
   
   Cobb loved France enough to criticize the French particularly in the decades from the Baron Haussman in the mid 19th-century to Georges Pompidou in the 1970s when so much destruction was visited upon Paris in the name of `architecture.' Cobb shows that Brussels and Paris sustained more damage after World War II than before: "The damage which has been inflicted on these two cities is not, then, the result of enemy--or Allied--action" (200). In Paris distinctive neighborhoods were destroyed by the French themselves with no concern for how people's lives were being altered or the monoculture being created. Well, Monsieur Cobb, this vandalism to intimate dwellings, social settings, tiny restaurants, private gardens, the homes and boulevards of experience, is now a global condition. Thank you so much, Professor Cobb, for such beautiful writing on such a bittersweet topic.

1 comments about Bilbao and the Basque Lands, 4th (Cadogan Guides).

1. I had planned a 1 week trip to Bilbao for business (with a companion) and was desparate to find a guidebook on the city. I was just lucky enough to have the 4th edition of Bilbao and the Basque Lands (BBL) published days before departure (with no stock in the 3rd edition??).
   
   Although this book is the only real thorough guidebook I found that focuses on Bilbao and the Basque region, it is certainly a first rate guide. Although I didn't explore every corner of the city, I was able to use the many maps, restaurant recommendations, Guggenhiem info, language guide, as well as understand the history and customs of the region.
   
   For those who have time to explore more surrounding areas (the north Coast, Vittoria, San Sebastian, etc), I think this book is your best resource. I'm not a guidebook person, but this one is highly recommended.

5 comments about France: The Beautiful Cookbook.

1. This is easily the greatest French cookbook I've ever seen and one of the best cookbooks overall. I've been to France many times and the same food is in this cookbook as is in France. The recipes are easy to understand, the food is great, and the photographs just make you more and more hungry. I am a 16 year old boy who has a hard time cooking and filling myself, but this cookbook remedies both of these problems. The meals are simple, yet elegant, not to mention delicious, filling, and scrumptious. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys cooking and would like cooking to become a passion.



2. This book is really packed and pretty. The pictures are great, but I think it could have included more desserts.



3. I got this book on a closeout at my local bookstore, and at that low price the book is wonderful. I'd be a little less thrilled if I paid full-price... but only a little.
   
   I would guess that most "...The Beautiful" books are probably purchased for their coffee table appeal. This is a large format book (12"x18"), with stunning photos of different areas of France and of the food (there's generally one picture of the finished dish for every two recipes). If you want a book to inspire you to travel to France or to go out to eat at a French restaurant, or if you are searching for an impressive and pretty gift, this is a no-brainer. It's gorgeous.
   
   The recipes are very good, too, but I'm tempted to say that they're almost beside the point. There are 240 recipes, divided in menu-like sections (first courses, fish and shellfish, poultry and game, etc.) rather than regionaly. Each recipe is marked with the region it comes from, so you know that the mussels in cream is from Normandy and the veal rolls (paupiettes) are from Provence. There's also a couple of pages, with photos, describing each region. Nicely done.
   
   I'm not knowledgeable enough about French cooking to speak to the authenticity of the recipes, but none of them were jarring. Most of the dishes are kept on the simple side (I get the feeling that the "real" version might require a few more hours in the kitchen), and they do have interesting, if short, introductions. The intro for cassoulet, for instance, gives a little history of this well-known dish, and mentions regional variations ("Toulouse adds Toulouse sausage, leg of lamb and confit"). You'll find the usual suspects of French cuisine; 240 dishes is a bunch, but far from exhaustive.
   
   Most of the recipes are, as I said, very good. Their recipe for sole meuniere matches the one I use, and I have my eye on their recipe for beef braised with Calvados.
   
   However, the book does show that it was written in 1989, when it was difficult to find some "exotic" ingredients. The recipe for chaoucroute (saurkraut with pork and sausage) calls for, among other things, a smoked kielbasa, and 6 Strasbourg sausages or frankfurters. David Rosengarten's _Taste_ has a whole chapter devoted to charcoute (which led me to spend my sole evening in Paris at a restaurant for which it's the specialty -- maybe I'll send him the bill), and it's obvious that these are gringo subsitutions. Kielbasa, maybe; frankfurters, no way. (Oddly, though, they don't shy away from dishes made with venison or rabbit, which I find much harder to find.)
   
   As someone else mentioned, the desserts chapter feels short; there's about 20 recipes here, and I think most of us would assume that the French pastry section would be far larger.
   
   Overall, this is a fine book -- particularly for inspiration purposes. If you can get it at a good price, grab it.



4. I love this book! Great recipes and information about the country. Glossary is extremely useful.



5. Instead of purchasing this book here, I recommend looking for it in stores like Waldenbooks or Barnes and Noble in their section of books on sale. These stores always have a section of huge books that have been marked down to very reasonable prices.
   
   This book isn't particularly huge, but it is legitimate in its recipes. I have tried several recipes from this book and they've all come out wonderful and comparable to the "real deals" that I've tasted over in France myself. There was no need to alter any of the ingredients or amounts, as so far I've had no failures/disasters in cooking from this book. It is divided up into sections (poultry, fish, desserts, etc.) and each section opens first to an introduction to a region of France with a little bit of background. The book provides pictures for almost every recipe they list, which I know can be helpful to some readers/cooks to know what it is they're cooking.
   
   I would say, though, that some of the recipes might require you to be a little adventurous, as of course these authentic recipes require foods that Americans do not normally eat very often (like lamb and rabbit, for example). But I've found that other than that, the ingredients were not so exotic that I couldn't find them in the store and was forced to make adjustments.

3 comments about Access London 10e (Access Guides).

1. I just got back from a weeklong trip to London and this was one of several guidebooks I took with me. The positive is that there's a lot of information listed and from talking to London friends, it's fairly good information. The hip happening restaurants are in there. I didn't like the format -- everything is listed by neighborhood but within each section, it's mixed so for instance, you cannot simply find a list of all their restaurants in Mayfair, you must flip through the entire Mayfair section to see the restaurant listings.
   
   Ultimately, I found I used some of my other guidebooks a lot more.



2. i have travelled extensively for 30 yrs. i never go anywhere without 3 books: 1. Access guide for neighborhood details, a sense of where things are, and locals' favorite places. 2. Michelin's Green guide for an erudite perspective on history, culture, arts, etc. and 3. Frommer's for their "best of" pages.
   
   when i lived in London, i took out my London Access book every week to plan where i would go that weekend. Every time i move to a new city i buy an Access guide to help me become a local. It is a great resource for travellers and new residents.



3. My Access guides for Paris and Rome are invaluable, but this one is pretty disappointing. London is just too big a city, only the central London areas are covered. It does a good job with the neighborhoods covered, just not enough of them.

2 comments about Michelin Languedoc-Roussillon, France (Michelin Maps).

1. We're headed to the Languedoc this fall and I'm glad I ordered this particular map. Many small roads and villages are listed. And it was very easy for us to map our route from Montpellier over to Caunes Minervois, the village we'll be staying in.
   Also shows the roads/highways to go over the border into Spain and Andorra.



2. The Michelin maps are excellent. They are extremely detailed with a scale of 1 inch = 3.16 miles. With motorway exits and entrances for example, it's clearly marked in which directions they operate. It includes useful information like toll roads, petrol stations and even speed radar locations. I also like the insider information. Panoramic lookouts and scenic routes are all clearly indicated (the other regional maps that I considered didn't have this). However do be aware that unlike the broader regional Michelin maps, there are no indications of which towns and villages are of interest to tourists. (Although the Michelin Green series guidebooks list the map references for all places of interest).
   
   This is essentially a regional map with only central Montpellier being shown in any detail.
   
   One annoying thing is that the map is printed on both sides, so you're always flipping it over (which increases the risk of damaging or tearing it). It opens lengthways rather than widthways, which would be near-impossible to manoeuvre sitting in a car! Being double-sided also makes it less easy to navigate routes between the northern and southern parts of the region. Nevertheless, if you want to travel off the beaten track in this region, it's invaluable.

No comments about Wallpaper City Guide: Budapest (Wallpaper City Guides) (Wallpaper City Guides (Phaidon Press)).

1 comments about Blue Guide Southern Italy, Eleventh Edition (Blue Guides).

1. A guide book should
   
   1. review hotels, with phone numbers, email, website, closing seasons, price, and comments on quality;
   
   2. review restaurants, with cuisine, price, phone numbers, email, website, and closing times and days;
   
   3. have maps of towns with detailed and labeled streets (including one-way), marked with recommended hotels, restaurants, parking, and sites;
   
   4. good regional maps for driving;
   
   5. drawn or photographed areas for orientation;
   
   6. printed plans of museums (with opening times and days) and identifying diagrams of detailed art works;
   
   7. religious notes;
   
   8. and detailed discussion of the picturesque, the beautiful, the sublime - in nature and the arts - for the plucky, intelligent, curious, willing-to-learn, urbane, cosmopolitan traveler, done with a sense of history.
   
   The reader of this review should know that for me #8 outweighs all the others put together. For ##1-6 there are probably better travel books than The Blue Guides, the latter treating these matters a bit too cursory. A brief thumb-through in a large bookstore will tell which other guidebooks might meet these criteria - though British books are better than American, the British a less parochial and better educated people (perhaps I should add: I live in the South of the US). There are certainly better guidebooks for #7. Yet for #8, in English (those in German are better, the Germans an even more cosmopolitan and urbane people), The Blue Guides are the best, at least for those books most regularly updated. I have bought them for years and for every destination traveled. The Blue Guides are also kind enough to put the date of publication in the front, unlike the guidebooks of assorted confidence men and hucksters - a testimonial to the Blue Guide's integrity.
   
   The _Blue Guide Southern Italy_, 2007 (11th ed.), has 584 pages, of which the first 289 are Campania. Basilicata is covered in pages 291-318, Calabria 319-368, Abruzzo and Molise together 369-428, and Puglia 427-528. Unlike earlier editions, Latium south of Rome is excluded, leaving one to hope that Latium-Beyond-Rome will be a future Blue Guide. There are a copious index, a glossary of special terms, diagrams of the classical orders, and historical charts. Maps of many towns are provided. Just enough photos are included without the text turning into a glossy coffee table tome, and there are floor plans of important museums and churches. Usually how-to-get-there by means of train, bus, and car is discussed. The description of #8, especially with respect to the arts, is good - the book's real selling point. And it's not printed on cheap paper.
   
   Puglia deserves a book of its own, and another for Basilicata and Calabria. Perhaps the British and Irish don't go there (Blue Guides are published in the UK). The recent publication of a _Blue Guide Marche_ leads one to hope.

1 comments about Home & Dry in Normandy: A Memoir of Eternal Optimism in Rural France.

1. This is no dry description of the cold hard facts and potential pitfalls of buying a property in France, it is a humourous, poignant and very readable chronicle of the whole process, and the people encountered during it, from the first wish to the eventual fulfilment of a dream that many, many people share. The insights into the very different attitude to life and mind set of their growing circle of friends and neighbours is educational in itself, I wish I had read it before we bought our property in Normandy, we would have understood more about what was happening, laughed a lot more and would have probably been a lot less stressed!
   
   This is an enjoyable read for anyone and not just for people who are buying or thinking about buying property in France, it is a book for anyone who can enjoy reading about some of life's characters in a story about a couple actually getting up and doing something that most others only dream about.
   
   I laughed out loud at some parts and felt their sorrow at others in a book that explains, with insight and humour, a lot of things about France and the French that I, for one, have never quite grasped before, putting all this into a story that held me from page one.
   
   By the time you finish you feel that you know George & Donella West and that you would instantly recognize any one of the characters described in the book. You are able to sense their changing attitudes to the local people and, in turn the locals attitude to them as the story progresses. It is the first in a series and I really look forward to reading the rest.

No comments about Artwise Rome Museum Map - Laminated Museum Map of Rome, Italy - Streetwise Maps (Artwise).

No comments about Time Out Shortlist London 2009 (Time Out Shortlist).