No comments about 365 Days in Ireland Calendar 2009 (Picture a Day Wall Calendars).

1 comments about Three Men on an Island.

1. I read this book last year. It was a moving experience, as one feels as if one is there on the island with the young painter, MacIntyre, and his two mentors. The story is set on the tiny island of Inishlacken, "Last parish before New York", and is written in the first person by MacIntyre. It is a snapshot of the old way of life in Ireland that is now gone forever. The book is beautifully illustrated with paintings and sketches drawn by the three artists during their time on the island, and these alone make it worth the money. But it is MacIntyre's gentle, humorous, vividly descriptive style of prose that is most captivating, and which ensures that you will be finished reading in less time than you thought. The book has a magical aura about it that makes it stick in your mind. In many ways, it reminds me of Laurie Lee - a true genius of autobiographical writing. MacIntyre's book is one of only a few that I have discovered which is worthy of comparison with Lee's magnificent work. The book made me laugh, think and reminisce about experiences I have had in Ireland. But ultimately, it is rather sad, and I would be surprised if any reader out there is able to make it through without a lump forming in the throat at some stage. Overall, I cannot recommend Three Men On An Island highly enough. For those who have enjoyed reading the autobiogaphical works of such writers as Laurie Lee and Antoine De Saint Exupery, this book has the same emotive magic that novels such as "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" and "Wind, Sand And Stars" have in abundance. Now, please go and order it - it will remain with you for the rest of your life. P.S. There is a reference to Emile Zola's La Terre (The Earth) in this book - you would appreciate it better if you read La Terre (which is fantastic, also) prior to reading Three Men On An Island.

1 comments about The Road to Ballybunion.

1. Outstanding narrative about the Irish people and their great golf courses. John Degarmo describes in detail his experiences traveling and playing the southwest golf courses of Ireland. Anyone who has played Ballybunnion, Tralee, Killarney or Waterville this book is a must!

No comments about Shades of Scotland 1956-1988 (By Appointment Only Series).

No comments about Baedeker Ireland (Baedeker's Ireland).

2 comments about MTV Ireland (MTV Guides).

1. I recently took a trip to Ireland, specifically Galway, Cork and Dublin areas. This was the only guide book I brought with me and it let me down on several occassions. In Galway we were looking forward to checking out Padraig's Bar since it was listed as one of the best in the area. Too bad no one has ever heard of it and the bar's phone is out of service. I was surprised that the book was off on some things since it was a recent edition - 2006. I wouldn't recommend this guide book. I should have known better since it was funded by MTV.



2. I recall that the "Let's Go" guidebooks for young travelers were started by Ivy Leaguers on summer break. They mix a commendable exposure to culture with practical tips on decent, affordable digs and eats. Their ethos speaks to a generation who combined a budget with a brain. By comparison, the title of MTV perched above all else proves the power of branding for the current demographic. They may not have come out of the Ivy League, however, and from the contents I've perused appear more likely to party all night down the pub, cruise for a genial hook-up, and crash the next day at the recommended hostel.
   
   If you are wanting guidance on pick-up spots, internet cafe rates, gay-friendly hangouts, shopping sprees, or surfing or kayaking, this book, on the other hand, appeals to the young visitor more eager to chat up new friends for a night or a fortnight rather than take in another cathedral's nave or a dull display of a famous writer's scanty memorabilia. It does give helpful advice on ice-breakers for meeting folks in Belfast, how to turn down firmly but gracefully a persistent come-on from the next barstool, or how to tap with a coin your freshly poured pint of Guinness to know when it's best to hoist the glass. Nuggets of such information, often as blue-printed sidebars, make up for the rather mundane layout and lack of pictures. The book opens easily, the type is readable, and stars, "best," and "free" mark particular entries. Specific (a good touch for foreigners) credit card info, URLs, and phone numbers are included.
   
   Unlike many competing guidebooks such as Rough Guide or Lonely Planet, there's no colorful illustrations to leaven the pages of text. Unlike the Moon Handbook (reviewed by me on Amazon), the maps are few and poor in detail. Unlike the Footprint guidebook (also reviewed by me), there is a paucity of attention given cultural or historical contexts. Surprisingly, however, the editing even for Dublin, for example, compresses too much. Only three bookstores are recommended for all of Dublin, while the well-chosen stock (with a generous emphasis on gay topics) at Books Upstairs receives no mention, contrasted with the rather fustier (but still it's often overlooked, and so deserves a mention too) Greene's. The county map at the back endflap is useless, indicating only the borders and 32 county seats. The space could have been used for a decent, if again minimal, highway and major cities and market towns map on this crucial portion of any useful guidebook.
   
   The tone tends towards the glib, no surprise if you watch MTV. This is not a Frommer's (which however spun-off this via a John Wiley distribution with this guide!) for the mature and more affluent tourist, or a Fodor's with its calm recitation of the finer places to lounge and dine. The choices for both horizontal and reclining activities here tend to be ranked as Cheap, Doable, and Splurge, but all for a far more vibrant hipster crowd. Sleeping, Eating, and Partying (Bars/Lounges, Pubs, Clubs, Gay Scene, Live Music, Comedy Clubs, Performance Venues: subheadings in Cork City!), replace the more terse lists of a few pubs or cafes most competitors provide.
   
   Basics, Getting There & Getting Around, Sightseeing, and Road trips from hub cities are featured. This follows a sensible design that I recommend given the reality of how most visitors get to know a corner of the country for a few days. What to do lists if you have a day are also helpful. Maps however, may need to be supplemented by those in other guidebooks, or free maps from tourist offices. I do like, perhaps since the snarky attitude comes as a refreshing if soon annoying antidote to my usual preference in both armchair and actual use of Irish guidebooks, the honesty. The lack of pretense, after all, remains a certifiably native trait.
   
   This would not be my only guidebook, but if you happen to be under 35 or so, or accompanied by younger folks on your visit, I'd give the target demographic a look at this guidebook with an eye towards packing it along. In the rural areas, many counties only earn a handful of sites or towns for detailed mention. This book covers the major cities better but skimps on the market towns and scenic but perhaps half-moribund (for the ravers' tastes) hamlets. It does cover the Aran Islands, yes, but it tells of the boredom that readers with a short attention span may find along with the beauty. Granted, you can tell the younguns to read the appendix, "History 101" that does give a few quick pages to necessary background for even the least scholarly member of your travelling road show to comprehend during the flight over.
   
   I know this is meant for an audience that no previous guidebook has catered fully to, and more power to it if it draws its readers into a more sustained immersion in the craic and the warmth that even tawdry consumerism cannot totally eradicate. We hope. Its persistent lack of depth regarding the Irish heritage (one page total for books, films, and music recommended, and many of these poorly chosen!) can be countered by a Blue Guide at the other archaeological extreme, or the New Age-Celt pilgrim might choose Cary Meehan's Guide to Sacred Ireland (also reviewed by me). Let's Go combines brains with frugality. Footprint & Moon are both commendable one-writer introductions that convey a single sensibility well while exhausting the island; Lonely Planet & Rough Guide stick to the path once less-travelled if no longer off the beaten track, and Fodor's & Frommer's do carry a gravitas that balances the tipsiness in MTV's p-o-v.

5 comments about Lonely Planet Greek Islands.

1. I used this book for Crete and Santorini and it just didn't get the job done. Fortunately, I had Let's Go Greece 2005 with me as well. It had much more accurate and useful information, at least for the the two aformentioned islands.
   
   LP Greek Islands is useful for keeping your Athens cafe table from wobbling, though. So, it has that going for it.



2. I own a LOT of Lonely Planet travel guides and have always been happy with the insider information they provide. This book, however, is lacking in MANY ways. First of all, there are hardly any photos. Secondly, it seems like the same island description has been pasted onto each island. It goes something like this, " This is one of the most beautiful islands....". Lastly, it falls way short in hotel listing. In Mykonos, for example, the book only list 3 hotels in budget, 3 in medium price range, and 3 deluxe hotels. You've got to be kidding! All that's listed as far as excursions in Mykonos is the number of a travel agent and a gay cruise. Sorry,..not interested...in either!! I want descriptions and suggestions. Did Lonely Planet really ever visit all of these islands? VERY disappointing!



3. Like its companion book (Lonely Planet Greece), this is an excellent guide (but just to the islands)! It is concise, reads very easily, and gives good common-sense recommendations on what to see and where to stay. It is as up-to-date as you can reasonably expect with changing prices and euro/dollar fluctuations. A very, very practical guide from the budget tourist to middle class. Excellent pictures, very good maps, a fine job! It reminds me, in a way, of the Michelin guides to Europe. Having said that, Lonely Planet Greece gives you basically the same information on the islands, plus mainland Greece, for just a few dollars more. So unless you are flying into Athens and going only to the islands, you are probably better off with the parent book.
   
   Reviewed by David Lundberg, author of Olympic Wandering: Time Travel Through Greece



4. I read the recommendation from Amazon, who recommend reader to buy "Lonely planet island" and "Lonely Planet Greece" together.
   However, I found the book of " Greece" is enough!! Because you can find enough information of islands in the book of "Greece", you needn't to buy the book of "Greek Island" again! I am not happy for the recommendation from Amazon, which is difficult for me to trust it again!



5. In general, while I find that Lonely Planet produces far and away the best country guides, their city-, region-, and continent guides have a tendency to be surprisingly light on actual information. (One would expect city guides to have, say, _more_ information, but sadly no.) The same is true for LP Greek Islands, which uses the same stock descriptions to talk about virtually every island, really giving very little sense of how the flavor and atmosphere is different in the different places, and with very few photos to give you a sense of what each island looks like. Ferry information is minimal but sufficient, but if you're looking for information on alternative lifestyles, look elsewhere. Even the section on Mykonos, a famous gay retreat, barely acknowledges it as such!

3 comments about Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook (Texts and Contexts).

1. This is a book exploring the author's search for a childhood identity forged in Hungary in the shadow of the Holocaust and her family's subsequent emigration to the USA. For many complex reasons, childhood issues had not been addressed for much of the author's adult life. The book is a wonderfully evocative memoir of childhood, a search for a national identity and an accurate and sensitive portrayal of the sense of alienation felt by those with the immigrant experience. It is set in the background of the diary written by the author while she lived and worked in Budapest in an academic capacity. As she explores the issues around Hungary's newly found freedoms in the 1990s, she examines them in the context of the uglier aspects of Hungarian and European nationalism which had decimated Hungarian Jewry. Although told from the Jewish viewpoint, it has broad appeal and addresses many important aspects of the human condition.

   The author's considerable literary ability (she is professor of Romance Languages at Harvard) is evident in the exquisitely sensitive descriptions of events and emotions from both a child's and adult's viewpoint. She seems to have learnt well from the authors on whom she has based her distinguished career. Emotions leap at the reader from every page, often rapidly traversing the spectrum of joy, sadness, longing, confusion and humor. At all times there is a strong prevailing sense of the author's awareness of how her uniquely Hungarian Jewish background profoundly influenced every important outcome of her life and her world outlook.

   The dilemma of being an outsider, yet identifying culturally and nationally with a sovereign state is well known to many Jews and constitutes the fundamental European Jewish experience. Many of those (myself included) who underwent this in repressive political systems fled to the western world and became very successful and yet experienced a sense of national and cultural alienation in their adopted societies.

   Despite addressing emotionally charged, controversial and sometimes uncomfortable subjects, there is always a sense of lightness and what is almost playfulness. Not all issues are serious and there is one hilarious description of Hungarian toilets, which every Westerner must have felt (if not voiced) upon their initial experience with these dreadfully designed pieces of porcelainware.

   Although an emotionally charged book, it never descends into unrealistic sentimentalism - the message seems to be that no matter what we do with our lives, where we come from has a profound effect on who we are and how we see the events around us. Acknowledging this can be liberating.




2. It's in no way clear what any of this has to do with scholarship, either on the level of literature, history, or autobiography. Suleiman is clearly her own biggest fan, and the book does nothing but detail her personal celebration of herself. It is, for example, in no way clear what her name-dropping accounts of dinner parties and non-attended talks is supposed to signify within the context of serious, reflective scholarship. If you're sitting a qualfiying exam anytime soon for a degree in Susan Suleimanism, by all means read this book, but it is a waste of time for anyone else. Let's hope this volume sounds a death knell for academic self-aggrandizement: come back to earth Ms. Suleiman.



3. Further up "A reader from Cambridge" proved that he did not understand nothing at all. It's just for this guy that I do have to explain, that this book has nothing got to do with scholarships or so. It's hard to belive that he did not find out while reading the book to its end. He or she however seemed to have noticed in the end that he or she might blame himself or herself and therefore missed to leave the full name.

   For the rest of the world I would like to say that this is not big literature, but an important book. Once individuals stop to be interested to investigate in their history and to try to understand what was happening when and why, we will loose a chance to prevent dark parts of human history from coming back. This is why this book has a right to exist and this is what we can learn from it. It gives us an example for ourselves. And Suleiman does not celebrate herself, as her critic says, but gives us an unproctected view into her feelings. This makes her vulnerable and the "reader from Cambridge" takes his freedom to eagerly touch her wounds.

   I say it very clearly: Books like Suleiman's help to make sure that "readers from Cambridge MA" buy a book about the Iraque war the other day and complain that it is not really on the oil business.

1 comments about Ireland, 6th (Country & Regional Guides - Cadogan).

1. I have been to Ireland many times, and don't really need a travel book. However, for this coming trip I wanted to learn a little about the places I haven't been, so I picked up this book. It's really well written, and thorough. The maps are liberally distributed throughout the book, and have lots of details. Highly recommended.

No comments about Ohthere's Voyages: A late 9th Century Account of Voyages along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and its Cultural Context (Maritime Culture of the North).