No comments about Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London 1840-1930 (Reaktion Books - Topographics).

1 comments about Village Walks: Provence: 50 Adventures on Foot (City Walks).

1. Each walk has only 1-2 paragraphs of information-- not nearly enough to really know what you are looking at and why. I guess if you have a big guide book too--where you can look up the importance or meaning of the stops on the walks--these cards at least provide you with a small map.

No comments about Special Places to Stay: French Hotels, Chateaux and Other Places, 5th (Special Places to Stay).

1 comments about We'll Always Have Paris.

1. As a frequent visitor to Paris I know the city pretty well. I'll take Baxter's We'll Always Have Paris" with me next time and drill down to the next level of tourism. An easy and slightly racy style. Good holiday reading even if you are not Paris bound.

1 comments about Peter Mayle's Provence: Included A Year In Provence and Toujours Provence.

1. Our whole family has enjoyed being transported to Provence by these tapes while on long distance driving trips. The readers voices conveyed perfectly the flavor and humor of these stories, and wheted our desires to join the author in the bucolic splendor of the French countryside. After a year I still recall the feeling of the warm summer sun and the icy winter winds, the tastes of the provincial restaurants, and the uniqueness of the neighbors and friends we met and enjoyed via these remarkable tapes. Were that all books on tape were as well done and captivating. Highly recommended if you would like to savor the unexpected joys of an often not-so-quiet country retreat.

5 comments about Michelin Green Guide France (Michelin Green Guides).

1. The Red Michelin Guide for Hotels and Restaurants is without doubt the best reference guide book - not only for Parisian but also all for all other French Hotels and Restaurants. This is thanks to a qualified experience, which Michelin has accumulated in over 100 years. The original Michelin Guide for Hotels and Restaurants was originally produced in 1900 by the French tire company Michelin in order to give the chauffeur of a auto a good guide of where he could stop and relax in an an adequate way with his employer. In addition , the original Michelin guide also listed petrol stations, which were rare a the time. In fact, petrol was actually first sold in pharmacies in those very early days of the automobile. Today, the Red Michelin Guide is the reference for hotels and restaurants - not only in France, but for all other European countries. For restaurants, the most important verdict every year is, of course, the Michelin stars - it can make or break them.



2. The London reviewer is right. Michelin's guides have acquired such authority over the years that you might say that while others offer just opinions, the Michelin is fact. Those coming to Michelin for the first time will have to learn the symbols and codes: unlike most restaurant guides, written as a series of "restaurant reviews", Michelin has almost no descriptive text at all (the little there is was a novelty introduced only 100 years after the first edition) so its rating is all the more lapidary. No qualms here about being judgmental! As a result, you may want to carry other hotel and restaurant guides with you when visiting France, but you will always, always rely on the Michelin to tell you the truth about levels of comfort and the quality of cooking. And only the Michelin offers such comprehensive coverage. If there's somewhere decent to eat in the remotest corner of Brittany or the Correze, Michelin will know. Conversely, if a town has neither hotel nor restaurant in the guide, you just don't go there, it's a simple as that. By the way, when driving around France, use Michelin road maps. Any city, town or village with a place in the guide is underlined in red, so wherever you are, when you start to feel hungry, you know where to go!
   One reservation as regards the London review: Michelin is not as reliable on restaurants in other countries, where you should always compare with a local guide; but you can still use it to double-check hotel standards before booking.
   By the way, all the ratings are on Michelin's web site - but you'll still need the book of course when travelling around.



3. I have fond memories of the French Michelin Guide I had 20 years ago. But it was a regional Guide (Provance). What I loved about that book was that it seemed anything of cultural importance in a town (or village) was mentioned in the Guide. That is not the case with this overview version for all of France.

   The other problem with this book is that it is organized alphabetically. If you want to plan a day trip from Paris you will need either another book or a lot of map reading to decide what to look up in this Guide.

   The regional Michelin Guides are unique, and clearly worth the high ratings they receive. I can't see why anyone would buy this excerpted version.




4. Reviewer Mr Munger is confusing red and green guides. The red guide is a guide to hotels and restaurants in France, nothing more. As such, it is unparalleled.



5. I came back from 10-day trip to France. Let me first say it was a great trip, but it's was not because of this book. Actually, I don't remember opening this travel guide during my stay there. I eventually left it at the last hotel I stayed in Nice before I went to Venice. As other reviewers have mentioned, this guide book alphabetizes towns in France, not by region. It is very inconvenient compared with finding what to do in one region, say Provence or a town. Not much tips or details about where to go, where to stay, but states facts of towns and buildings like a boring social study books.

No comments about Flers: Somme.

2 comments about Blue Guide Provence and Cote D'Azur, Second Edition.

1. Generally I find the Blue Guides to be the most intelligent guide books around. While I did find much useful information in this book there was an attitude that got on my nerves. Perhaps it was the frequent and disdainful references to the "wars of religion", just a bit too superior for my tastes. Also Marseilles conatains some very important examples of 19th and 20th architecture that receive little if any attention. Similarly the buildings by Le Corbusier and Norman Foster are not discussed. In short a quaint, conservative, waspy view of Provence.



2. Blue Guides fill a gap left by other guides if you've very interested in art, architecture and history. The index could be more comprehensive. This guide has some good maps and a sprinkle of lodging and restaurants listed. You should probably also have another guide for additional lodging options.

5 comments about Bistros of Paris.

1. Bistros are great for meat eaters; book doesn't point out whether any of the listed bistros will accommodate non-meat eaters. Stay away if foie gras, pork knuckles, and tripe don't turn you on.



2. Having lived in Europe for several years, traveling to Paris hundreds of times, I've found this book to be the most reliable way to find an excellent restaurant while out and about. These people really know and appreciate French cuisine.



3. Dude, the Robert Hamburger who wrote REAL Ultimate Power is different than the Rober Hamburger who wrote Bistros of Paris. You're an idiot if you think that a 10-year-old is also a 51-year-old. It's two different people, moron. Besides, Robert Hamburger, the ninja guy, hates bistros. He even says so on his website.



4. I Found this book to be not helpfull with my ninjering study, I thaught that Robert Hamburger had writen this book about ninjering in paris. I nearly bust a nut when i saw it was a new book by him. I fliped out all over some guys flowerbed and couldn't stop myself to break a hole naiborhood including the trees which i broke in to down the middle like candys, it was so sweet. But whats bistros?



5. You can do much better on your own by choosing crowded restaurants than depending on this book. For example, we relied on this book's recommendation and ate at Bistro Odeon described as moderately priced and very popular: neither description was accurate. This restaurant was almost vacant at peak time and for good reason. Very expensive in light of value for food received. We paid $24 dollars, US currency for three small scallops cooked essentially in butter and garlic,nothing at all exceptional. Dishes recommeded by the authors were flavorless and the wine, perhaps our choice, was pretty bad.
   
   I think this book is very outdated. It recommends Chez Rene, a restuarant I have visited over the past twenty years and in that same period there has been a marked decline in quality accompanied with a substantial price increase.
   
   To be fair to the authors, I would like the reader to know I base my opinion on the 2001 version, so the authors may have updated and refined their opinions. If not, I think the reader can do better when eating in Paris than he, or she would if this book is used as a guide. We certainly did.
   
   Stephen Kane

4 comments about The Philosoph Demise: Learning French.

1. No, this is not a book about "learning to speak French", as the subtitle indicates -- rather it is a book about a man trying to overcome his linguistic shortcomings in fluently speaking the French language, while skewering the Alliance Francaise (language school), French scholars of Descartes, and French bureaucracy, all in one extended essay (too short to be dignified as a "book", really). It passes all understanding that the author believes that anyone other than his nearest and dearest care about his traumas in taking French lessons or being snubbed by his fellow scholars in Paris (or being stung by a yellow jacket in the good old U.S. of A., for that matter). A total waste of a long afternoon. Watson and the reading public would have been better served had he just bought a set of Pimsleur CDs and then shut up.



2. When Richard Watson tries to learn to speak French decades after having learned to read it fluently, he has trouble. He tries very hard, hires a tutor, labors hours every day over exercises and audio tapes, but it just won't come. He spends months in France and still, he can't pass his exam.

   Watson is a philosopher, therefore he must analyze the situation to death. He dissects his failure, perhaps it is because French sounds un-masculine, maybe he doesn't like the French, perhaps it is something deeper. Well, seeing as how he has evidence that his French really has improved by the time he leaves France, maybe he just set his goals unrealistically high.

   The self-analysis gets tedious sometimes, but the story is interesting and understandable. Everyone has difficulty learning something, no matter how smart they are. And the observations of different cultures are eye-opening. Watson's story about an American who speaks fluent Japanese, traveling in Japan, being refused lodging in an inn because he didn't speak Japanese, even though the lengthy conversation with the proprietor took place entirely in Japanese, was amusing.




3. What I particularly love about Richard Watson is that his francophobia has the breadth to include the French language itself: "The poem played on tape was about how to paint a bird. First you paint a cage, then you paint flowers and plants around it, a beautiful sky, and so on. You wait. Your painting is bad if a bird doesn't come and land in the cage. If one does, it is good and you can erase the cage and sign your name to the painting of the bird. Putting aside the cuteness of all this, what made me realize how much I disliked the sound of French was the continual, unctuous, caressing repetition of 'l'oiseau' ('the bird'). It is a word the French believe to be one of the most beautiful in their language. It is a word that cannot be pronounced without simpering, a word whose use should be restricted to children under five."
   
   Confere Anthony Burgess's hatred of the consonant deficiency of French: "The French seem determined to destroy their Roman inheritance by chopping up words until they become as short as possible, and as capable of being confused with other chopped-up words as only a genuinely morbid condition of language can allow. Even when a French word or name bears some visual resemblance to its classical original, the spoken form submits to the axe. I can never grow used to pronouncing 'Jesus Christ' as 'Jezu Cri', and I feel that if the French could cut the holy name down to something like 'Je Cr', they would."



4. Richard Watson's book was an entertaining read -- it was hard to put down once I started reading it. It is not just about his struggle to learn French -- it is about how it feels to be on the outside looking in, and about how it feels to face unprecedented, inexplicable failure. The author is introspective, and he relates his experiences in an amusing and thoughtful way. Although he gives us a peek into a world most of us will never encounter (that of Parisian philosophers specializing in Descartes), we can easily empathize with his feelings of frustration, humiliation and cultural confusion. Since I am also struggling to learn to speak French for the first time, I was gratified to see I am not alone in my frustration.