1 comments about Out Around Paris, 2nd (Out Around - Thomas Cook).

1. I was very disappointed in this book. It made absolutely no attempt
   to include anything of interest to lesbians. It was all "Where the
   boys are" and other itmes of interest to gay men only, such as fashion,
   etc. If you are a lesbian, don't bother with this book.

2 comments about Where to Wear, Paris, 2006: Fashion Shopping From A-Z (Where to Wear).

1. Great - need it for a trip to Paris!



2. Fun read for anyone traveling to Paris and also for the arm-chair traveler, Informative and helpful for more than just shopping.

3 comments about Send Me a Postcard: Freighter Cruising With Frances Flynn.

1. This book made me want to go on a freighter voyage. Lots of good information. Everyone I have shared the book with loved it.



2. If Frances Flynn were on board, it would be worth twice the price for a trip on any freighter. Open and honest, funny and sad, always open to the moment, she shows us how to make the most of being alive. Her book is worth whatever you have to pay to get hold of a copy.



3. If you're planning a freighter cruise, absolutely don't leave without reading this book. Frances candidly writes about the highs and lows of her voyages and I feel much more prepared for my first one.

3 comments about Blue Guide the Loire Valley (Blue Guides).

1. La tradition d'érudition un peu austère des Guides Bleus Hachette est mise à mal dans cette édition honnête mais sans plus. Le voyageur visitant pour la première fois notre région trouvera le nécessaire, pas le superflu ni ce supplément d'âme qui faisait des Guides Bleus une référence absolue.



2. You will prefer Eyewitness Loire Valley guide book. Dorling Kindersley; ISBN: 0789404265 because of its pictures and detailed visual explanations.



3. I am a big fan of the Blue Guide series, I wouldn't want to go to Europe without one. However, this is one I left at home. The author takes you on a road trip around the Loire Valley and comments on every village he passes through even though most have absolutely nothing in them. The major chateaux are given quite a bit of space, especially their architecture but not much on the historical context. The entire book was very dry. I do not buy the Blue Guides for their advice on how to get around, but I certainly expected something better than this.

4 comments about Parisians: Photographs by Peter Turnley ; Forewords by Edouard Boubat and Robert Doisneau ; Text by Adam Gopnik and Peter Turnley.

1. For those of you who have been to Paris, Peter Turnley's work will strike a deep sense of longing to return. His ability to capture some many facets of life throughout his book is delightful. I really enjoyed the mix of people, places, and situations he photographed such as a French woman in a barista or fans at a soccer game. His use of black and white photography added a sense of timelessness to the work. In summary, I think the book is an amazing piece of work that highlights the diversity and beauty of Paris.



2. Peter Turnley has captured the spirit of Paris and the souls of Parisians and presented it in one beautifully produced volume for the world to see at an affordable price. The images are stunning and the order of the images contributes to the quality of the book. I expect to return to these images often for years to come.



3. After being in Paris for an entire summer, I've returned to the US with great heartache. Paris had a profound effect on me, so when I arrived in the states, I feverishly tried to gather all I could to remind me of Paris. On a whim I bought "Parisians." From the moment I opened it up, I was suddenly back in my beloved city. The photographs capture Paris in the way that takes me back everytime. Turnley's skill at capturing the essence of Parisians is striking, uncanny and charming. If you've been, you miss it, or want to know what Paris is "really" like, just open the cover of "Parisians." On the days I want nothing more than to transport back to Paris, all I have to do is open this book and I'm there.



4. It is a beautiful collection of images of the life in Paris. Seeing the pictures make you yearn to go there to take your own pictures.

No comments about AUTHENTIK / Artistik Paris (Authentik).

No comments about Michelin Rhones-Alpes, France (Michelin Maps).

1 comments about WALKING THE SOMME (Battleground Europe Series).

1. Recently a British friend and I (Yank) followed one of the book's walks on the Somme. The details in the book helped greatly. Beyond the basic description, all the snippets of poetry, diary entries, official history, and photos of soliders and then-and-now battle sites added greatly to the walk. The only thing we felt missing is that the many walks so well described in the book and well-mapped individually are not shown together in one area-wide map, which would help orient the first-time visitor.

5 comments about Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Chateau.

1. Even though this book is split into two sections, there are really three distinct parts.

   In the first Henry Lincoln gives a "light" account of his adventures with Rennes-la-Chateau. For those who've read The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail it is fun to hear of his first trip to Rennes, or his first meetingwith Plantard.

   The second part is a recounting of the "purely objective" parts of the mystery. It's all pentagons, but not as obsessive as THE TOMB OF GOD.

   The third part is admitedly speculative. If you've read the "Affirmations" section of The Dilbert Future, it's like that. Saying that there is not satisfactory proof for the thesis, but that it is worth investigating, he describes the layout of Bornholm island, Brittany, and Norway. There are some weird coincidences, like the persistance of the name "Rennes" (or something similar) in all these locations, but nothing is proven.

   The last ten pages, which are part of the third section, argues that the English system is ancient and based on the distance between the poles. It's weird, possible, and not proven.

   If you've just heard about Rennes-la-Chateau this is not the book for you. If you've already read much of it, and want some less heavy information about it, The Key to the Sacred Patternis the book for you.




2. I thought the book was "oversold" in a way. From reading the jacket it looked like the "answer" to the Berenger Sauniere mystery, to what on earth it was that turned this impoverished rural cure into a wealthy identity. Now, yes, I know we have the sacred geometry, but it's unfinished? Where's the follow-up on the trough near the grove of trees? Where's the follow-up on just what may have actually happened at the focal point of that pentagram? We don't see it. While the anecdotes are interesting, and tragi-comic in some cases, they almost appear out of place? In some parts I felt like I was reading "The Making of Holy Blood, Holy Grail"" (which I loved by the way).



3. In a lot of ways this book is really Henry Lincoln responding to the BBC2 television programme "History of a Mystery" which did much to disprove not only his own book ("Holy Blood, Holy Grail") but the derivative work "Tomb of God." This is also Lincoln's way to distance himself (only slightly, however) from the Priory of Sion story (which has very much been proven to be a hoax) and stick more with the geometry aspects of the story (which were really investigated first by David Wood in 1985).

   This book is basically just Henry Lincoln setting down the events of his creation of the BBC "Chronicle" programs in the 1970s that opened up the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau to the European community. He wants to show the path he took to allow people to see that he was not "duped" as he has often been accused of and that the path he followed was logical. To a certain extent, it probably was logical. However, what Lincoln fails to acknowledge in this book (and all his other books) is that Jean Luc-Chaumeil, who does get mention in "Sacred Pattern," basically "ratted out" Pierre Plantard and the alleged Priory of Sion. Chaumeil's work has shown that the Priory was nothing more than a hoax that was started up by Pierre Plantard, who really was in a group of the same name that was started in 1956 by Andre Bonhomme. Thus, Lincoln was "duped." As was Gerard de Sede before him. He fell for the hoax, realized it, and then tried to latch on to another element of the "mystery" that seemed to have more promise and did not involve a "secret society." Lincoln also never mentions the massive contributions to the "mystery" by Jacques Riviere, Pierre Jarnac, and Rene Descadeillas. (He does briefly mention Descadeillas but then dismisses him without any explanation.) He also does not mention that he was presented with evidence from Jean Luc-Chaumeil before the publication of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" that showed the Priory of Sion was a hoax and that he ignored. Lincoln, in his more recent research, has only concentrated on the alleged geometric aspects of the so-called mystery and he has given up trying to promote the Priory of Sion. That is basically what this book is about: setting up his new element of mystery, the alleged odd geometry. (He also did this because his 1991 "The Holy Place" is largely out of print and thus many of his fans were not aware of the extent of his work in this regard.

   All in all, this is a relatively okay book if you want to try to get a very chronological fashion of how certain events happened during the course of the research, which is important to determine the veracity of an independent researcher like Lincoln. However, there is absolutely nothing new in this book that you could not read in "The Holy Place" or in the books that were co-authored with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. I would definitely not recommend this book unless you feel you just have to read everything on the story or you feel you need a "blow-by-blow" account, as it were, of Lincoln's research pattern.




4. After reading Andrews and Schellenberger's "The Tomb of God", Lincoln's books seems a little uncomplete. The author's merit is, without any doubt, to have risen the big question about Rennes le Château, with a series of documentaries and books.
   After "The Holy Place", Lincoln embarks on a new adventure, recalling other interesting particulars which take the target out of Rennes le Château, leading the reader to North Europe and to Fibonacci and the Templars.
   A little too much critic towards Andrews and Schellenberger (who, on their side, have the merit to provide useful information and to suggest further readings), in the first part Lincoln sounds a little too jealous of his own theories and unwilling to listen to other people's point of view. A little too fiction, so to speak. The only reference to "The Tomb of God" (which is not mentioned in the bibliography, indeed very small and not helpful)is really arrogant.
   At any rate, the second part of this book is absolutely a must, something able to drag you attention to other interesting, fascinating aspect of human history.
   recommended to those who think Rennes le Château is only one ring of the chain.



5. There is a peculiar hostility to information coming from the "Grail publishing industry", that began with the English publication of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982). Peculiar because book authors like Lincoln provide much clearer and much more documented historical perspectives on European history in general than many one-dimensional "public consumption" historiographies you may have have been force-fed in a school somewhere which really think "they have it." Well, I have to tell you. Histories that ignore these issues will always have it all wrong.
   
   Above, for example, I have noted screed "reviews" of the book, where certain things (without reviewers' bothering to enlighten us on data for their hotheaded pronouncements) on so called "confirmed hoax" of this thing, and the "lies" of the pentagonal frameworks. All those words without information is just fluff taking up reviewer space and taking up your mind.
   
   I have to enlighten you. Read Lincoln, because he deserves to be credited for ten years before others (1991 the first publication of these issues I think in a more public form, than simply occult venues; 1997 for this book). By the way, what he describes as the "pentagonal geometry" links up with what others academically call "archaeoastronomy".
   
   This wider issue of archaeoastronomy (large geographic architectures of laylines, buried caches at such intersections, waybills, etc.), are instrumentally still being engineered as "late" as the U.S. Civil War to hide treasures, or they are found in the design of cities like Washington DC, or even the capital area of Israel.
   
   There is an unbroken "occult geomancy-elite" tradition in European history that Lincoln stumbles upon. This is what it all connects to: a skien to how mainline European political history connects for quite some time with occult political history. For an English audience, Lincoln is one of the first to follow the trail of evidence. One should credit him for that.
   
   Books I mentioned above I would share the titles for, for those willing to seek out the data for more examples of pentagonal (or other shaped) geometries as an ongoing occult marker system used by powerful political secret societies in European elite occult networks:
   
   1. Key to the Sacred Pattern (1997)
   2. The Secret Architecture of Our Nations Capital (1999)
   3. The Knights Templar in the New World (1999, 2004)
   4. The Templars' Secret Island (another co-authored Lincoln book, 2000, 2002)
   5. Templar Gold (2001)
   6. The Shadow of the Sentinel (2003)
   7. The Lost Colony of the Templars (2004)
   
   Without Lincoln's original research (as he was the one who connected and shared with Beigent and Leigh), perhaps the whole Holy Blood, Holy Grail "book industry" would still be only available in French. If at all. Moreover, the way it would be written about might still be limited to the realm of guesswork mythopoetry (along the lines like "stories of sea creature alien Atlaneans", etc.) instead of what we always have from teams that Lincoln is associated with: disciplined academic discussion, that gives the readers evidence while hardly demoting the drama of such discoveries either.
   
   Thus, I salute Lincoln's ongoing work, and so should you. And because it is so thoroughly documented, paradoxically, is why a lot of disinformation gets peddled against such books. There are a lot of people and interests who want to keep citizens from knowing what actually goes on.
   
   As always, read it for yourself and learn to mentally trash unattributed claims to authority (without evidence) in some reviewers above. After reading the above books as well, I would recommend it all the more because it does indicate an empirical pattern is seen elsewhere.
   
   Welcome to your world. It requires patience to plumb. I'm glad Lincoln has the patience.

4 comments about Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure.

1. Wechsberg's book is an established classic on a par with those of A. J. Liebling and Waverly Root. Like those other authors, Wechsberg was a journalist who wrote about food, restaurants, and food cultures in the mid-20th century, and his insights and great storytelling give the writing a permanent appeal. This can be seen from the reaction after this essay collection (whose chapters were originally written as magazine articles) appeared in this reprint edition in the mid-1980s. I was at a Christmas party with some accomplished food folks, including Paul Bertolli of the Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and was recounting to someone one of the stories ("Tafelspitz for the Hofrat") from this book. When I finished I found that most of the room was listening, and that many of them, independently, had recently read the book too. That particular essay, by the way, has lately been re-discovered in Vienna, where it was set, and has been proudly adopted by some restaurants there. In this book Wechsberg interviewed, and popularized to US readers, the legendary Fernand Point, chef and owner of the 20th-century's most famous and influential restaurant in France (and for whom the _Guide Michelin_ reportedly debated adding a fourth star to their rating system for premium restaruants). Some of the chapters are interviews, some experiences and some celebrations of food. This book is well known and indispensable to food fanatics and those seeking more of the background and context from which contemporary western culinary culture -- high cuisine as well as comfort food -- emerged.



2. Wechsberg's name ought to be mentioned alongside M.F.K. Fischer's. His writing is evocative, precise, and vivid. Reading this book makes me wish I could board a time machine and eat in the restaurants he described in the 1950s. Like many Viennese, Wechsberg loves the old city, the city that vanished after the wars, and resurrects it in memory.



3. What a romp in the world of food! You'll feel satisfied at the end of the book... like a good meal.



4. Though Blue Trout and Black Truffles is billed as Culinary journey, and it is at that, it is also something completely unexpected, an introduction to European life in the 1920s through 1940s. The exploration of food and wine is coupled with vibrant characters and unforgettable settings.