4 comments about Stand Where They Fought.

1. I bought this for a first time trip to Normandy and found it very informative, interesting, and helpful in planning my trip (where I wanted to be, for how long, what distances were). It's a great read just prior to going over so that the beaches and towns and bridges are meaningful to you when you're standing there. I've read a ton of WWII books, and I liked this one a lot.



2. This book is undoubtedly the BEST book if you want to tour around Normandy without a tour guide. This book will give you so much more than tour guides will ever know.



3. This book is not really a "guide" for those seeking to travel about the American sectors of Normandy. There are no road maps or specific directions to these sites. For "maps", the book has various aerial photos with some of the roads and sites marked on an overlay. The book is more of short military history of the campaign itself. For that purpose it is not too bad. For those seeking a book with directions to specific Normandy sites I dont recommend it. Instead, I would recommend Major & Mrs. Holt's Battleifeld Guide. It comes with very specific directions, pictures of the sites, an excellent map as well as a good summary of the campagin.



4. This book is a must for the military history buff who visits battlefields. The aouthor's details are amazing, Great to read and organize before going over and an easily action recognizable read on the sites. Any road map of the area is applicable as the author quides the tourist to the site via route numbers. We'll use it again at the 65th anniversary in 2009/ Very highly recommended
   
   Robert J. Sample (CDR retired, USN)

1 comments about Bordeaux and Its Wines.

1. If you love great photography and are bored by all the predictable efforts that appear in most wine books, this is for you! Some of the shots by Max Alexander are really breathtaking, and, like the text, they really give a sense of the place. A terrific, affordable coffee table book

5 comments about Cheap Eats in Paris (Cheap Eats).

1. We have been living in Paris for the last 4 months and have tried to use this book with varied success. We have found may of the entries outdated. In fact the first two restaurants we tried to find no longer exist. Many of the "Eats" are by no means cheap (Paris is expensive anyway). There are lots of cheaper ways to eat well in Paris. We have had about the same luck trying places that look interesting.



2. I've taken this book with me on 2 trips to Paris, & enjoyed every recommendation that we followed from the book. (Actually had to buy the book twice since first copy was lost by a friend on their trip to Paris). It gives you a pretty good description of the environment/background of the restaurant, selects several good dishes worth trying, & lets you know if there's a prix fixe menu. It may be time for an update, but if you want to stay in a budget, you won't find a better guide for eating in Paris unless you have friends that live there.



3. I didn't remember reading this book three years ago until my partner bought a copy. Naturally a restaurant book written several years ago will be somewhat out of date, but this one is laughably out of date. When I tried to find a restaurant in 2000, I was usually disappointed, because it wasn't there. Now even fewer can be found in Zagat's Survey. It was hard to locate them with the maps, because of numerous errors. Not only will you be horribly served by this book, you will waste a lot of time.



4. Back in the late '90's & early 2000's this book was the best of its kind & rated 5 stars then. Our favorite restaurant of all time "A La Biche au Bois" & our 2nd favorite "Le Petit St. Benoit" were found here & both are still in business. But copyright 1998 (meaning the data was probably gathered in 1997) makes it oudated. What drives this home is that the menu prices are given in French francs.
   
   Personal message to Sandra: We need you back in Paris updating your book!!!



5. If you were to assume that this book would have some incorrect information since it was published this long ago you would still be disspointed. Not only are the prices still in francs but half of the resturants listed have moved, changed their prices drastically or simply no longer exist. This book might of been valuable when it was printed but no longer is. Don't waste your money.

5 comments about Lonely Planet Morocco (Morocco, 5th ed).

1. I am preparing to depart on my third trip to Morocco. This book is THE BEST travel guide for Morocco. It gives the first time traveler and the veteran good insight on where to go, what to see, and the all important how to act and how not to get taken advantage of.. My husband, a Moroccan native won't travel around his country without it.



2. Once more, Lonely Planet has managed to write a complete guide to the budget traveller. I've recently been to Morocco and this guide was very useful. But I think it should be more explicit when writing about how to avoid being robbed, harassed and how to drive among those crazy Moroccans.



3. I just returned from a wonderful stay in Morocco, and this book was most useful. One minor quibble - re the book's advice against men wearing shorts - it's quite acceptable now



4. Just returned from a 17 day trek to Morocco, and this LP guide never left our bodies. Prices, especially for hotels, were remarkably in line with the guidebook - a real shock, considering it's now two years old. Still, the quality of a couple of highly-touted good deal-rooms have deteriorated. An updated volume would be great; hope it's forthcoming. (Also Ñ and this might be streching it - while the book makes cursory mention of Morocco's huge unemployment rate and poverty ills, LP Morocco hardly paints the picture of the grim reality of life in some towns and cities. One can't expect a travel guidebook to completely prep you for those types of social problems, but I thought the authors glossed over those facts.) Other than these complaints, though, LP's Morocco is an essential, and much more informative, read than the Rough Guide Morocco. And compared to other LP guides, its Morocco edition is a cut above.



5. This was my third interaction with Lonely Planet books and I am impressed. The information and maps are more than fairly accurate (there is not much you can do about the winding narrow passages in the old towns).

   During our stay, we not only carried this with us to get better background information on all the sites we saw, but we also would spend part of the evenings reviewing the history and planning our next day's excursions. I concur with the other review about men wearing shorts. It didn't seem to be a problem for myself or my wife in many of the major cities (like Fes, Marrakech, and Rabat).

   I would recommend this guide before (to plan what you want to see), during (to understand what you are seeing), and after (to help you determine what exactly you photographed) your trip.

No comments about Cool Hotels Paris (Cool Hotels).

No comments about Michelin Poitou-Charentes, France (Michelin Maps).

2 comments about An Englishman in Paris: L'education Continentale (Englishman series).

1. I was disappointed in this book although Michael Sadler has an impressive knowledge of France, French and the French and parts of the book are undoubtedly funny. Still, I felt the humor was too deliberate and over-the-top for my taste, not to mention a bit on the crude side. A heartfelt francophile, Mr. Sadler tracks a year-long sabbatical spent in Paris with the primary focuses of the book being his quest to bed a married Frenchwoman and his association with a neighborhood group of men who hang out at the local bar and periodically indulge in semi-clandestine meals consisting of unusual French dishes (pig ears, bull testicles, etc.). If the story about the married woman is to be believed as truth, there's an uncomfortable amount of kiss-and-tell, meant-to-be funny detail of their "courtship" and one 23-minute sexual encounter. The book also contains much extensive descriptions of food and drink and, unfortunately, the negative physical ramifications of his over-indulgences for the author. Much of the book is in or references French and, although he explains the majority of it, I doubt that I would have followed it all if I hadn't been living in Paris for some years myself. Not that it detracts, but the perspective is definitely British, not American, so some minor references might not mean much to an American.



2. A delightfully witty & engrossing book..hard to put down & full of the infinite nuances of French language & manners etc.I highly recommended it for any Francophile or accidental traveler.

5 comments about Something to Declare: Essays on France and French Culture.

1. "Something to Declare" is a clever title for a book about travel abroad; but, beyond its opening pages, that's not what this book is about. "Essays on France" is an equally misleading subtitle, for the book's erudite essays (beyond the opening chapter) are not on France but on a narrow selection of French writers and related movers and shakers, and one fictional character: Madame Bovary. After a fast-paced, dazzling opening sequence, hilariously describing the teen-aged Barnes' first encounters across the English Channel, we slow down to pick through some highlights in the lives of some of the top French authors, poets, filmmakers and other cultural icons, eventually easing to a crawl through exhaustive detail regarding the author's main interest, Flaubert and his world. If Madame Bovary is your cup of tea, you may enjoy steeping yourself further in Barnes. For me it was just too much.



2. Barnes's collection falls into two halves. The first is a collection of pieces that might be said to have a French theme: a review and appreciation of Edith Wharton's account of a car journey taken through France, a piece of French songsters of the sixties, a very entertaining look at the perils of the Tour de France. The second half is nearly all given over to Flaubert, Barnes's obsession. The essays on the great writer are fascinating, especially those centered around his correspondence. Barnes's love for the writer and the man is contagious. I had no great enthusiasm for Flaubert, despite having loved Barnes's 'Flaubert's Parrot', but since reading this book I have read 'Madame Bovary' with a great deal of pleasure and have begun looking into the correspondence. All the essays are scrupulously and stylishly written and are worth reading for the prose alone.



3. Firstly, I did not gather all this book had to offer, as I do not have the knowledge that Mr. Barnes requires regarding French popular music of decades ago, including Georges Brassens, Boris Vian and Jacques Brel, and other topics that can only be fully appreciated if you have previous knowledge of them. Another example is his detailed discussion of French Cinema, again, hard to appreciate fully without prior and extensive knowledge. As a testament to his writing skill and style, these barriers did not keep me from reading every bit of this book. Unfortunately I had to read many parts as a novice, but his talent as a writer makes that effort an easy one to make.

   There are many essays that will appeal to a wide audience, Edith Wharton, the Tour de France, Henry James, and his discourses on the writers George Sand, Victor Hugo, Stephane Mallarme, and Ivan Turgenev. No book such as this by Mr. Barnes would even be contemplated without a large portion being devoted to Gustave Flaubert, his friends, his actions, and the world he lived in and created. Flaubert is the basis for Mr. Barnes to explore the role of biography, the selective use of historical fact, personal papers, and the revisionist methods that can be employed when even identical source material is used to document the same individual. When Mr. Barnes makes an appearance in the book it is a picture of him standing by the final resting place of his much loved topic, the final resting place of Flaubert.

   The topics I mention are not even close to an exhaustive list of the material that is covered. I have read virtually all of the books and essays that Mr. Barnes has published, and this book is decidedly unique. The book falls short of 300 pages only because the author chose to keep it dense. A slightly more verbose pen could easily have doubled the size of the book. You will likely spend more time on these 279 pages than you generally do, whether with Mr. Barnes or another author.

   A very different book from a brilliant mind and very talented observer and writer, just be prepared for a very new experience from him this time around. He has not taken his readers on a trip like this before.




4. The title of this book, as you can see, is "Something To Declare: Essays on France and French Culture." The blurbs on the back of my trade paperback version enthusiastically support this title. However, only a quarter of the pages of this book are devoted to a discussion of "France and French culture." The rest are spent on the very specific topics of particular French artists and authors, most particularly Flaubert and things related to Flaubert. Given that artists and authors often make a point of setting themselves apart from their cultural milieu (especially most if not all of the ones Barnes writes about) and are often, at a minimum, a bit out of touch with the reality of the world around them, writings on these folks can hardly be deemed to reflect "French culture," as promised by the title. Barnes is, of course, perfectly entitled to publish a book composed of these elements; however, it would be nice if the title and blurbs made it clearer that that is what he is doing, for those of us poor unenlightened souls who do not go into a swoon every time we see or hear the name Flaubert -- for those of us who, in fact, would be perfectly happy for the rest of our lives if we could avoid anything more than infrequent passing references to Flaubert. Simply put, the title does not fairly represent the major part of what is in the book. If you are looking for a book on France and French culture, you can do much, much better with your reading time and money. Moreover, the essays that are not general in nature assume an intimate, detailed knowledge of Flaubert and his writing. If you do not have such an intimate, ready-at-your-fingertips, working knowledge, you will often not know what Barnes is referring to and will consequently have no hope of understanding the point he is trying to make, even if you hang in there and read the whole thing, as I did. These essays are intended for an audience of initiates; reading them in a book like this that purports to address a much more general topic will just leave you feeling like an outsider to the club. Oh, and it will be even worse for you if you fail to hold the belief that "Madame Bovary" is worth intense worship as one of the greatest things to ever have come along, both before and after the advent of sliced bread.



5. Julian Barnes is probably the British writer most associated with French influence over his literature. Most of his novels are influenced by France in one way or another, especially his acclaimed 1984 masterpiece, Flaubert's Parrot.
   
   In the introduction to these essays, Barnes traces his personal affiliation with France. From nervous childhood holidays with his parents, to his immersion in French language and culture while studying Languages at Oxford, ending with a 1997 trip across the Channel to deliver the ashes of his parents. He cheerfully admits a bias towards French culture over his native Anglo-Saxon and this fact permeates the essays here.
   
   The first part of the book features a range of essays on obscure French singers, the film director Francois Truffaut, Elizabeth David's cookery writing and, best of all, a lenghty piece on drug taking in the Tour de France.
   
   In the second half of the book, the emphasis shifts to Flaubert, Barnes's self professed literary idol. The essays span the full range of Flaubert's life and his associations: his biographers, his mistresses, his relationship with other writers and film versions of Madame Bovary. Flaubert was given extensive fictional treatment in 'Flaubert's Parrot' and these pieces perhaps read like a reworking of the research notes for that novel.
   
   Unlike most wannabe British continentals who think that to become au fait with European Culture one just has to eat at The River Cafe and take the occasional jaunt to Paris or Rome, Barnes has clearly read many pages of French literature and watched many metres of film. His depth and range of knowledge is impressive and the style is (as with all Barnes's writings) erudite, crisp and piercingly intelligent.

5 comments about Paris (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. The book is a cute, appealing size. It lists many good bars, places to eat etc. But it has a major flaw: No matter how hard I searched through the book, I didn't see any mention of arrondissements, which are the various numbered neighborhoods.

   Everyone in Paris and every map uses these numbers to direct you. "It's in the 14th." for example. Well, with this book I had to constantly reference other maps then locate the street and see which arrondissement the place was located in. I'm not just venting. I was really disappointed I had depended on this book as my only resource.

   Additionally, because it combines neighborhoods - I assume to save space so it can maintain a petite, portable size - that is confusing as well and also prevented me from being able to map the named neighborhood to the arrondissement.

   My recommendation? Bring this book only if you can bring another. It's really not worth the price considering the hassle.




2. I used almost this entire book while in Paris. The book gives great "walk routes" to make sure you see everything (for example, it features a walk through Pere Lechaise Cemetary). While you walk, it points out areas of interest and tells of the history. It also tells you which metro stop to get off, so all the areas in Paris and surrounding area are easily accesible. I will use this book again next time I visit France. If you dig old castles, check out Fontainebleau Castle, which is about an hour train ride out of Paris. This is the ultimate book for Paris travelers. It even has a "french phrase insert" for easy translation and speaking. This was my first time to Paris, I was meeting my best friend there, and for the most part I was alone and was not lost because of this book!



3. ...experience Paris.

   It is a dream to use, very clear and user-friendly. The street-by-street maps were invaluable. There were also detailed maps and descriptions of individual sites (like museums, and Versailles) which guided you through the highlights of those sites.

   I would use it constantly, so it was hardly ever in my bag. Even my husband, who is anti-guidebook, used it too! We ended up seeing and enjoying more of Paris than I could ever have imagined beacuse of the detail included in this book.




4. My wife and I went to Paris on our honeymoon and we had a fantastic time in that glorious city. One of the things that helped us enjoy more and that helped us take advantage of all the city has to offer was having this travel guide.

   The Eyewitness travel guides are a step ahead of any other series of travel books because it not only includes the same information that the other have, but they also include additional information that is really great to know and have while abroad.

   This guide has all the usual bits about he city: the top sites to visit (including work hours so as not to get there when they're closed!), how to move around (info on buses, Le Metro, trains, taxis, you name it), lists of shops and restaurants (with different price ranges and organized by location)and great street maps. It also has historic information on the city, which truly enriched our visit by helping us appreciate the places and sites we were visiting.

   However, the greatest thing about the guide were the "walk routes", helpful suggestions on ways how to best go site seeing. Even if you don't follow them completely, they give you great ideas on where to go.

   It also includes lots of information on sites outside of Paris, which are great to visit if you have the time.

   All in all, an excellent travel tool!




5. This book has hooked me on the DK Eyewitness guides. I'm living in Germany right now and my whole family came to visit this past summer. Using this book, I took my sister, then later my grandmother around Paris. Finally this fall, my husband and I went.
   
   The maps were good for helping us find the nearest Metro stations, as well as the roads. The Metro map in the back was a life saver. I could figure out our whole route and where to transfer just as we got onto the Metro.
   
   I've noticed people complain these guides are a little heavy, but they must be packing VERY light. Since I already have to carry a diaper bag around, I throw the guide into the stroller bag for easy access and found it very manageable.
   
   The only issues keeping it from a full 5 stars, are the road maps and location information. If you're staying outside of Paris, you need another map for your hotel. I wish the roads would stretch a little further, into the suburbs. Also, while the guide says it's updated yearly, some of the hours for certain locations were wrong. Supposedly Luxembourg Gardens were open until around 9pm. We barely arrived and were kicked out at 5pm. Also, the Louvre is open late two nights a week. The book had the wrong two nights. 90% of the times were accurate, but they messed up on some important ones.
   
   Overall though, I definitely got my money's worth out of this book. And nothing to do with the guide, but I'm sick of Paris now. Going three times in the span of three months can be a bit of an overkill. :-)

No comments about Fluent French: Experiences of an English Speaker.