No comments about Moon Prague and Budapest (Moon Handbooks).

No comments about Living in Greece (Taschen Specials).

3 comments about Buying or Renting a Home in London 2006-07: A Survival Handbook.

1. Unless you don't know how to buy or rent a place AT ALL, like--don't know how to negotiate something--this book it useless. you'd be better off with a phone book with vague descriptions of each region. It doesn't help you as a newbie figure out the best place to live. It's more of just a passive reference--an accumulation of random data. Do not buy--I returned it.



2. Well's like they say one man's meat is another one's poison. I read several books on buying a place in London and I keep coming to this one. Gives all the facts I need for making a first time decision in buying a house. Most of the other books were for tourists. This book gives detailed facts including council tax rates for each borough. Extremely handy. I wish I could have the info placed on my computer.



3. Contains in-depth looks at each of the neighborhoods; very useful when cross-referencing with the online realtor web sites when hunting for property. Contains some filler as well, but on the whole very useful if you're moving to greater London.

No comments about Michelin the Green Guide Auvergne (Michelin Green Guides).

1 comments about Stockholm Map by ITMB.

1. This large map shows everything in great detail with the various points of interest marked and identified (palace,the museums,even some of the hotels) so easy to plan a route. It even shows which streets are pedestrian only which is a great help. The guide books were great at telling me what to see, but not very good at how to get there. The tiny, incomplete maps in the guide books I bought were hard to read and left out a lot of streets as I found out when I got this map. I would call this a must buy if you will be exploring the city on foot.

1 comments about Britain - Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette (Culture Smart!).

1. Culture Smart is a "to the point" helpful book that anyone will appreciate when it comes to working and doing businesss in the UK. Even a visitor can garner lots of bite size pieces of helpful info to maket the British experience even more enjoyable. I loved the writing and the layout of the copy.
   Great tool and great tips re: life in the amazing UK!

No comments about Frommer's 24 Great Walks in London (Great Walks).

5 comments about A Traveller's History Of France (Traveller's Histories Series).

1. This is a good example of how NOT to write history. In about 200 pages we have a brief over-view of the whole history of France. Unfortunately, Cole tries to say too much--too many names and dates. In order to get all his names in Cole has little room left to explain anything important about history: wars "break-out" and artists "come to" Paris. Why any of this happens is without explanation.
   Even for the traveller with a passing interest in the history of France, this book in inadequate. There is no special attention paid to places of interest to travellers; there is little mention of the great artists and cultural figures of France, and the history included in often written in an uninspired manner that will bore most readers.
   If you are going to France and what some history, look elsewhere.



2. The subject is not definetely boring but this book is. Why? the relation of events are handled poorly, daily life is not written, the place of France in Europe in terms of political status or economical status is not written. It is like a reference book giving the dates and people names, who married to whom, who administered what part of country. This is definetely not history. I am still looking for a good book on France's history.



3. When I travel I like to read the historic markers and understand the significance of what I am seeing. If I don't have a clue about the context ("the what dynasty was when?") I tend to feel lost and frustrated. Typically, I don't have the time in the weeks before my trip to digest an eight volume history of a country but would like a high level view of the important people, periods and events in the country's history. "A Traveller's History France" perfectly fit that bill.

   Some of the features I liked are a list of all the French kings and their linneage, a timeline with all the relevant events and an alphabetical list of major events and battles. The writing is lucid, succinct as well as funny and opinionated. In this kind of book its important to convey a sense and a feel of entire century in the space of a paragraph and to stay connected to the larger political and social themes imbedded in the historical minutae. Robert Cole does this quite well.

   The biggest negative for me is that half the book focuses on the last two hundred years and that is the period of French History I know best. I would have enjoyed more of a discussion of the rise of the monarchy, the British influence in France because of the various invasions and a richer discussion of the religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries.




4. The text is poorly written - often it is unclear who the author is even referring to. For example, "he died a year later." Well. . . . who?? Many such examples where if you don't already know the history, you may feel a bit lost.



5. A useful book that is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in France's history. A good introduction to an enormous topic - it serves the purpose. However, if you are looking for a detailed, in depth, insightful history of France or a guide book, this is not the book to buy... and it doesn't claim to be.

3 comments about Greece: Land of Light.

1. An excellent book of pictures of the people and country. Makes me want to return to this lovely land of Greece again.



2. This is a reminder why I loved this country when I traveled in 2006 and why I want to go back again. The photography was excellent. Captivating!



3. Greece: Land of Light is a terrific book for an overview of what Greece looks like and what the country's history was like. The pictures and narrative are both excellent.

5 comments about French Toast: An American in Paris Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French.

1. A friend recently gave me FRENCH TOAST. Instead of picking and choosing between the tempting chapter titles - a toss up between The French and Money and The French and Sex - I read the book straight through.
   The book demystifies the French in a very humorous but real way. The reality check comes from the author's French husband who is interviewed throughout the book - thus giving a French twist and insight into an American's impressions.
   You'll learn things like how to make a real French beef and carrot stew. You'll marvel with the author at a French woman's ease making a 5-course meal in a skirt, high heels, sans apron! And you'll gleefully chuckle reading about to-wash or not-to-wash pre-sex.
   A toast to someone who treats cultural differences with lightness and humor!



2. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is either interested in France or who will be living there and wants to become assimilated. In a delightful way Ms. Rochefort shows how she learned to deal with the unexpected cultural differences she encountered during her marriage to a Parisian. She laughs at her naivite and unpreparedness for French customs and shows how she struggled to master French cooking, to understand French manners, and to enjoy hectic city living without giving up her love of her own country.
   
   Ms. Rochefort shows that while it's one thing to be enchanted the city of lights, it's a differnt thing to know how to live there, as a Parisian. Her lighthearted style is misleading, since it is clear that the adaptation to her new life was not always as easy as she makes it seem.



3. French Toast by Harriet Welty Rochefort
   
   This book has three virtues. Setting out to explain `the maddening mysteries of the French' to people from other cultures- and especially to their diametric opposites the Americans - it rests on decades of immersion. The author, who emerged into French life after growing up in small-town Iowa, has a French husband, passport, children, and household. She also works there. This depth of familiarity is an advance on that gained by most anthropologists engaged with similar cultural puzzles. Secondly, she has a sense of humour, an absolute requirement for such a brave venture, where the natives are not always friendly, and maps not always clear. Thirdly, she has a most engaging style of writing. This rests on knowing what needs to be explained, and bringing the topics alive with vivid anecdotes - almost all of which - although related with humour and tolerance, are nevertheless underpinned by a profound coming to terms with difference, and a search for the harmonies and things to celebrate. French Toast is an elegant couterbalance to the simple-mindedness of freedom fries.



4. I am neither American nor French. As an Asian woman, I lived in the United States for more than a decade, and I have been living in France for exactly one decade. I had been married to an American and now to a European. With my former training in cross-cultural psychotherapy, and having lived and worked with people of various racial backgrounds, I have a great interest in inter-cultural relationships.
   
   I had read French Toast the first time in 1999, shortly after moving to France, and I was quite amused at the author's descriptions of the French. I read the book again very recently and her account has confirmed my own observations of both the Americans and the French. She said that she had only a "bird eye's view" of the French during those past twenty years. To me, her bird eye's view was remarkable. What had struck me the most when I first arrived in the United States more than thirty years ago was the "individual" versus the "family'. The author has lived through and felt that experience. As an American woman living in France and being married to a Frenchman, she talked about the cultural gap getting bigger and not smaller, and how deeply cultural differences run below the surface. I myself can certainly identify with those dilemmas.
   
   The author has a fabulous sense of humor. Very few books addressing cultural conflicts can be written with such tolerance. What I really admire in her book is her ability to laugh at herself and at her own mistakes. Very few of us can do that.
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding French behavior, whether they are tourists or planning to be long-term residents in this country. Reading this book is both entertaining and enlightening. I also think the book cover design is quite charming.



5. I am also an American woman living in Paris. Before I picked up this book I thought it was going to be a typical, steroetype reinforcing, superficial romp down the Champs-Elysees. Not at all! Its really funny, and works as much as a memoir as an introduction to the culture. My experiences in France are not identical to that of the author because my circumstances (marriage, neighborhood, age) are not the same. However, everything she says rings true. Ah, France! I am hoping there will be a sequel!