No comments about Insight Pocket Guide Corfu (Insight Pocket Guides Corfu).

1 comments about Around Greece in 80 Stays.

1. This guide covers 80 exceptional small inns and guesthouses throughout Greece. These are not the tourist hotels on the beaches, rather these are exceptional small places with owners that care about their service and offer the best there is of Greece. The photographs throughout the book make clear the style and uniqueness of each place. Not for the traveler that wants popular resorts, noisy bars and crowded beaches, this guide is ideal for those with a little more time and money and an interest in seeing Greece behind the travel posters.

3 comments about Megan In Ancient Greece Pb (Magic Attic Club).

1. When Megan finds herself in ancient Greece, she almost immediately gets herself in trouble because she is bothered by the submissive role women there are expected to play. But by being her usual adventureous self, she manages to save the day (as usual) and win the respect of her (in Ancient Greece) male cousin. Another fun book!



2. Megan Ryder is a 12-year-old girl who lives with her mother . Megan has a friend named Ellie. Ellie has an attic with an old steamer trunk and every trip she takes the trunk has more clothes. This time when Megan slipped on a tunic and looked in the mirror she traveled into Ancient Greece.That night in Greece someone steals a very precious thing from the temple.Will Megan be able to find what was stolen?Will she be able to find who steals it?You'll be able to find all these answers in this book full of adveture.Over-all I think this book was exciting and shoud be suitable for any age to read.



3. Megan is very excited about the fifth-grade haunted hayride that she helped plan. So when the hayride has to be canceled due to rain, Megan is extremely disappointed. She decides to visit the Magic Attic, hoping an adventure there will take her mind off the canceled event. Megan travels back in time to the life of a young girl in Ancient Greece. Her uncle and cousin have built a new temple to Demeter, but there is a plot underfoot to sabotage it. Megan is determined to stop the villains but soon learns that will be difficult, due to the rules young girls of Ancient Greece are expected to follow.
   
   This is a good read for young girls who are fans of the Magic Attic club, who enjoy time travel adventures, or who are interested in the world of Ancient Greece. The short length will appeal to reluctant readers as well, and there is some education information about what life was like for the people of Ancient Greece, in particular women and girls.

No comments about Michelin THE GREEN GUIDE Vienna, 2e.

No comments about Greece: Treasures of the ancient civilizations (Ancient Civilizations).

1 comments about The Essential Greek Handbook: An A-Z Phrasal Guide to Almost Everything You Might Want to Know About Greece.

1. This is excellent for those who have travelled to Greece and wish to learn more about the people & the culture through interaction. It goes beyond a traditional phrase book, and contains very useful phases that other phrase books do not include. Most concern real personal issues that people really want to talk about such as family, beliefs, social issues. The translation of each phrase is phonetic, and is ideal for those who struggle with the Greek alphabet & pronunciation. The author also includes comments concerning culture next to the relevant phrase. A section on cultural subjects at the end of the book is helpful to explain the gestures, comments, & activities that a non-Greek traveller might find strange. I believe it is helpful for anyone interested in interacting with the local people when they travel. for someone interested in learning the language, I woould consider this as a necessary suppliment to a formal language course.

No comments about Later Travels (The I Tatti Renaissance Library).

5 comments about We Followed Odysseus.

1. We Followed Odysseus is the engaging story of sailing a small boat along the sea path of Odysseus' famous voyage. Crossing oceans and seas Hal Roth, with the help of his wife Margaret, re-traced the voyages of Odysseus along the Turkish coast and the isles of Greece. Roth sailed to a desert island in Tunisia, visited Sicily and Corsica, and traveled to Italy and Malta before returning to Greece. We Followed Odysseus blends two stories. One the ancient Hellenic account of the legendary voyage of Odysseus as recounted in "The Odyssey". The other is Roth's modern voyage to each of the nineteen legendary locations that Odysseus visited during his ten-year attempt to return to Ithaca after the end of the Trojan War. Of special fascination is Roth's candid discussion of what things may have been like in the days of Odysseus, and what they are like today. We Followed Odysseus is highly recommended reading for all armchair travelers, anyone who has thrilled to Homer's tale of the trials of Odysseus in his decade long struggle to return to his home and family, and an inspiration to set sail ourselves in search of our an adventure of our own!



2. One of the most entertaining and informative books I've read. I've never sailed the oceans blue but this book offered me insights into what the life would be like leaving me envious, but entertained.
   
   I had been reading Fagles recent and beautifully worded translation of the Odyssey. Like many, The Odyssey was required reading for me back in high school. I didn't remember much about it but became entranced while reading Fagles version by how primitive and modern the story seems at the same time.
   
   As I started to read We Followed Odysseus I became aware of how the The Odyssey was so fuzzy in my mind, a sort of mythical Disney sort of world. We Followed allowed a harder edged world to enter into the story. It filled it with what the real harbors may have looked like, what the actual journey may have felt like, and sharply clarified what the route could have been like. In short it gave me an insight into what this Greek hero may have actually endured giving Homer's story greater depth.
   
   Bottom line: when a book is entertaining, informs the reader in itself, and informs the reader about another great classic it rates five stars.



3. I approached this book with considerable anticipation. I have read both the Iliad and Odyssey several times, in various translations, over the past fifty years, and was anxious to get learn more from experienced sailors on the ground (or on the sea, as it were) about the actual places Odysseus was reported to have travelled.
   
   I found much to enjoy in the book, but also much that was quite disappointing.
   
   The descriptions of the sea and the land as seen from the sea, the process of sailing the sea, the landfalls and lands that might have been trod by the actual Odysseus were interesting and enjoyable.
   
   But the fidelity to Homer was sadly lacking. The author vastly oversimplfies many aspects of the Odyssey. For the sake, it appears, of a smooth narrative he makes many unwarranted assumptions and presents as facts things that are far from established. His book is filled with "Odysseus must have...," "Odysseus would have..." and such. These are fictional inventions, suppositions which, granted, come from experienced 20th century sailors, but which have no grounding directly in the work of Homer.
   
   For a lover of the Odyssey, the strongest parts of the book are its descriptions of the locations as Roth saw and experienced them and their comparison with Homer's descriptions. This is the way in which Schliemann in 1873 found the site of Troy when the prevailing wisdom of the time was that Troy was merely a legend. Schleimann took Homer's descriptions of Troy and its surroundings, examined the land in the light of these descriptions, found what he thought was the right place, started digging, and found Troy. (Actually, found about a dozen Troys, one on top of the other, but that's another book.) When Roth follows this pattern -- looks at Homer's descriptions of the places Odysseus visited and compares them with what he actually sees, reads Homer's descriptions of the winds and directions Odysseus travelled and tries to duplicate his trip -- the book is at its most interesting and compelling. Unfortunately, for some reason he felt compelled to gussy this all up with speculation and invention about what Odysseus "must" have done or felt that has no basis in the text of the Odyssey.
   
   For the reader who is just looking for an interesting sailing adventure story with a touch of culture tossed in to flavor the mix, this is a fine book. But for the reader who wants facts, information, descriptions of the places where Odysseus is reported to have walked, fought, and loved, it is disheartening to have to dig through all the superfluities and highly questionable assumptions to get at the meat.



4. This otherwise well-written book, is way too conservative when it comes to interpreting the story behind it. It is basically a remake of E. Lessing's "The Adventures of Odysseus", and E. Bradford's "Ulysses Found", and does not really present a PLAUSIBLE journey for Odysseus. It is disappointing to find that there is no critical challenge of any of the locations the Greek and Roman historians concluded upon 2000 years ago.



5. I'm a fan of Hal and Margaret Roth's books. Their books let me vicariously travel with them and as a history geek too, this book ties two interests together. Now, I will admit that I'm not a big Homer fan -- Rome being more my time period and interest, but so what -- this book was an interesting read and being able to read a modern description of the paces that Odysseus was supposed to have visited along with PHOTOS of this is great.
   
   I wish it were longer and they had covered some more of the Med, but so what -- good read!

No comments about Lonely Planet Grecia.

1 comments about Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island (Tauris Parke Paperback).

1. She may have written anonymous mash notes to her tutor, she may have penned brilliantly-argued letters to "The Times," but "Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island" was travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler's first book.
   
   Originally published during 1992, "Evia" is her first-person account of several months that she spent walking, hitchhiking and occasionally riding a bus or driving a car on one of Greece's larger, yet lesser known, islands. She was often alone, during this Evian Odyssey, save for a carpet bag full of books and the friends she made along the way. Despite what can only be called risky behavior for a young woman, the worst thing she reports happening to her is a fall from the back of a moped into a pile of dung.
   
   If the book had originally been intended as a tourist's guide, the current edition would be seriously out of date. It's not. Instead, "Evia" is an enduring tale of blue sea, white, sandy beaches, mountain trails, pine forests, monasteries and of fishermen, farmers, shepherds, housewives and others who people a primarily rural, mostly agrarian society, already in the process of change. It's the story of Sara's excellent adventure. It's also a history of Lombards, Romans, Turks and others who've come and gone and left their mark on the landscape, if not necessarily on the locals. The end result is a wonderful snapshot in time.
   
   Sara Wheeler has some distinct ideas about travel writing which may contribute to her success. In "Evia," she writes: "The transformation of the journey into the book and the imagination brought to bear upon the material is what counts and perhaps the best writers of all could dispense with the journey and write their travel books without leaving the study." In her introduction to "The Best Travel Writing 2008," she expands on this thinking: "The journeys writers make are slip roads to the private colonies of the imagination...the eye that looks inward always sees a new landscape."
   
   Like Tennessee Williams character Blanche DuBois, Ms. Wheeler had to depend upon "the kindness of strangers" to accomplish her task. Considering the number of strangers who did help her, she must be a woman who can charm a cranky crocodile.
   
   As a Greek scholar, the language wasn't an issue for her, and she certainly knew how to draw people out. When a female office worker at a mining company told her that her union was all right, Ms. Wheeler suggested that there was talk of the union being corrupt. The worker shot back with, "Look, if you had honey on your fingers you'd lick it, wouldn't you?"
   
   Humor is another Wheeler strongpoint. After failing to gain admittance to a local museum, she notes that, "The museum itself was temporarily closed, as it had been for nine years." When school children ask her if the British have a female prime minister (Margaret Thatcher) because all the men are homosexuals, she writes, "This was a difficult question to answer."
   
   This reviewer's only potential quibble is with her use of trireme (trieres) to describe the ships which transported Agamemnon's minions from Aulis to Troy. As dedicated, ramming warships, triremes seem to have developed about five-hundred years after the action recounted in Homer's tales. Even if such ships had existed, they would have been needlessly expensive and a poor design choice to simply transport troops, horses and supplies. To be fair, the English-to-Greek section of the "Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary" defines "warship" as "trieres." The problem here is that Agamemnon would have almost certainly have used merchant ships. Perhaps historians and literary types just aren't reading the same book with this one.
   
   When she wrote "Evia," Sara Wheeler had not yet fully evolved into the elegant prose stylist she has since become, but she was already a fine writer. In her introduction to the current edition, she says that the book was a labor of love. She then suggests that there was too much labor, too much love and not enough art. That's harsh. She describes a labor protest, during a mine strike on Evia as a "crucible of discontent." Anyone who can toss off lines like that and integrate as much material as she did into a coherent whole is getting it done. She also already had the wonderful ability to act as a facilitator for her readers' own mental travels.
   
   "Evia" was the work of a bright, brash, funny, stunningly well-educated young woman with a load of moxie and a way with words. It's still worth the ride.