2 comments about Stilwell's Ireland Bed & Breakfast 2002 (Stilwell's Ireland Bed & Breakfast).

1. This B&B Guide for accommodations in Ireland is chock full of useful information! Lots of listings, and many have e-mail &/or website addresses so you can plan ahead via computer. Phone numbers are provided for direct contact. I used this book for a trip to Ireland and was able to book great accommodations based on the info provided. The listings are catagorized by county, and maps are provided, so you can choose accommodations along your intended route. Listings are complete with info on rooms, baths, amenities and when the B&B is open. Lots of pictures! This is an essential reference guide if you are planning a trip to Ireland and wish to stay in B&B's!



2. Stilwell's books are unpretentious and packed with USEFUL information. If you're after twee descriptions and flowery copy buy one of the other guides, but buy Stilwell's as well because it has everything you need in it. A minimum of five times as many listings as the other guides as far as I can see. If you're interested in just hitting the road without much of an itinerary then this is definitely the guide for you: around lunchtime pick up the book, circle a few options, spend five minutes on the phone, and you'll have a great, authentic place to stay. The best way to do Britain and Ireland if you ask me.

5 comments about The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East (Eastern European Studies (College Station, Tex.), No. 21.).

1. In THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA, the University of Maryland University College has established a joint undergraduate degree program in business management with the Far Eastern State University in Vladivostok and the State University in Irkutsk. In the summer of 1993, author Sharon Hudgins and her husband, Tom, packed off to Siberia and the Russian Far East to serve as teachers in this cooperative venture, while the former was also Maryland's on-site program coordinator in both cities. This book chronicles their experiences from their arrival until their departure in December 1994.
   
   Whether she's describing the immensity of pristine Lake Baikal, the problematic living conditions in their high-rise apartment, local customs and food of the Buryat people, the vagaries and perils of shopping for household necessities, maddening water and electricity outages, local festivals, the growing pains of a free-market economy, the university students' learning ethic, or the conviviality and generosity of their Russian friends, Hudgins has a keen eye for small details, as when describing an open air market:
   
   "An Uzbek woman ... sold raisins and nuts in small paper cones made out of official forms from the Irkutsk Municipal Water Department ... In one part of the market, a pretty teenage girl, wearing a garish, flower-printed dress and a thousand-yard stare, held a handful of peacock feathers and sipped a can of Dr Pepper, while in another section two older women, both drunk, tried to punch each other out in a fist fight."
   
   I haven't been so engaged by a travel essay about Russia since Hedrick Smith's 1976 bestseller, THE RUSSIANS. My only criticism is the relative lack of photographs - only a couple at most per chapter. Luckily, Sharon's poetic prose paints pictures almost as effective as snapshots, as this from her vantage point on the Trans-Siberian Railroad:
   
   "A profusion of wildflowers carpeted the meadows, like an Impressionist painting exuberantly expanding beyond the limits of canvas and frame: undulating shades of yellow, gold, and blue, maroon and magenta, soft pink and pristine white, the pale purple globes of wild onions gone to seed, thousands of red-orange tiger lilies, whole fields of dark purple Siberian irises, and occasionally a single red poppy or two, like a stubborn symbol of politics past. Outside Chita a small lake glistened under the midnight moon."
   
   For me, a travel narrative is all it can be if it makes me want to go there myself. THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA accomplishes that. Well, maybe for just a brief visit, perhaps, because I certainly wouldn't want to live there.



2. The Other Side of Russia is part travel narrative, part social history, part memoir, part food writing. All these parts come together to make a terrific book.
   
   Sharon Hudgins and her husband Tom spent a year and a half in post-Soviet Siberia teaching business management for the University of Maryland's overseas program. As peripatetic ex-patriates, they were familiar with unfamiliarity. But they were still not prepared for what Siberia had to offer them.
   
   Join Sharon and Tom as they picnic with the Russian Mafiya, try to teach in an educational system that discourages questions and independent thinking, and ponder why a herd of horses is tangled in downtown rush hour traffic.
   
   In "Absurdistan" it is just one perplexing thing after another. The electricity and water in their poorly-constructed apartment building work only intermittently. But in spite of such challenges, they make friends and entertain regularly. Cultural differences mean that the same friends who swoon over delicacies such as wafer-thin horse liver slices rolled with layers of horse fat, are unable to enjoy a Hudgins Tex-Mex feast.
   
   Hudgins's previous work as a food and travel writer are evident here, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she writes fiction as well. The narrative is effortless and the stories she tells are by turns engaging and frightening.



3. The Other Side of Russia emerged from Barbara Hudgins experience of living in Siberia for a year and a half, from 1993 to 1994. Working as the onsite program coordinator for the University of Maryland University College in Siberia and the Russian Far East, she worked and lived in Vladivostok and Irkutsk.
   
   Hudgins book is the first book about Siberia I'd come across written by someone who spent extensive time in Siberia. This gives her a depth of understanding that adds a lot to her memoir.
   
   The structure of her memoir is unusual. She's divided the book into two sections. The chapters in part one focus on place - Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal, etc. - and the chapters in the second part focus on aspects of life and culture in Siberia - housing, education, food and festivals. Hudgins supplemented her first-hand experience with extensive research. This offers readers an in-depth source of information about many aspects of Siberian place and life.
   
   What's lost in this non-chronological format is Hudgin's own adaptations and reactions over her time in Siberia. She does insert some feelings and personality, but the focus is on the topic, rather than on her personal experience or characters who change and develop over the period.
   
   Hudgins seems to have thrown herself into Siberia with a remarkably open mind. She expertly captures the small details of Siberian life and renders vivid pictures of feasts shared with Russian friends. For those who have been to Siberia, this book will take you back there. For those planning on going, The Other Side of Russia provides a great overview of the life and culture.



4. In The Other Side Of Russia, author Sharon Hudgins takes the reader along on her Trains-Siberian Railroad adventure through Siberia and the Russian Far East, an area that was closed off to Westerners (and most Russians) prior to 1990s and the collapse of the old Soviet Union. Here the reader will be treated to a unique travelogue that will take them from the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, to feast with native Siberian Buryats, the food markets and "high-rise villages" of Vladivostok and Irkutsk, Christmas celebrations, New Year's banquets, Easter dinners, and Siberian festivals. The Other Side Of Russia dispels the myths and misconceptions about the Asian part of Russia which extends across eight time zones between the Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Offering a window of observation into this land of harsh winters, vast uninhabited spaces, friendly people, strange cuisines, and thriving modern cities, The Other Side Of Russia is a welcome, informative, and highly entertaining read which is especially commended to the attention of armchair travelers and students of Russian culture and history.



5. This was a very well-crafted and informative book, which I would recommend reading to those who haven't yet. For those who have, and who enjoyed it like I did, I would recommend Tent Life in Siberia: An Incredible Account of Siberian Adventure, Travel, and Survival, which George Kennan's account of his travels around eastern Siberia on dogs and reindeer sleds.

1 comments about Ireland Your Only Place.

1. 
   I have a large number of books about Ireland in my collection .While many are about history,and literature;I have many that are just "picture books" I have visited Ireland three times and while there are so many things that never cease to amaze me,the sights you encounter are spellbounding.
   This book has to be one of the more unusual approaches to "photographing Ireland" that I have ever seen.
   To start with, neither of the authors are Irish. Jan Morris who wrote the text is from Wales and Paul Wakefield ,who took the photographs is from Britian.Therefore it quite appropriate to say that this is Ireland as seen by outsiders.
   
   On the dust jacket is this comment;
   
   "Together,Paul Wakefield and Jan Morris have created a striking tribute to a country that is both exotic and uncertain,whimsical and mysterious." ..That they certainly did!!!
   The book contains 75 photographs,that are quite unlike anything you normally come across in similar books.Many photogtaphs are quite melancholy and all but one or two were taken on sunless days.Most of these pictures are full page or larger.An interesting aspect of this book is that there is no corelation between the photographs and the text. Therefore one could just viev without reading.That would be a mistake;because the text is superb and written with insight and understanding.Some of the photographs would be more interesting if Wakefield had provided some details for them.
   Many of the photographs are of such ordinary things that they prove the old adage that "Artists see where others only look". Beauty is everywhere,but it takes photographs like Wakefield's to show it to us.
   This book was first published in 1990 and republished again in 1998. It is certainly worth the effort to search out and enjoy because it is definitely a different approach to photographing Ireland.

No comments about Pick Your Brains About Ireland (Pick Your Brains - Cadogan).

No comments about West of Ireland Walks (Walks Series , No 3).

No comments about County Fermanagh (Ireland) (National Trust Guidebooks).

No comments about Rome: A City Out of Print.

No comments about Berlitz Pocket Guide Ireland (Berlitz Pocket Guides).

No comments about Kerry, Cork, Limerick (Irish Discovery Maps Series).

No comments about Hotel Gems in Great Britain and Ireland (Hotel Gems in the World).