No comments about Treasures of Umbria: Italian Regions.

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

1 comments about Hip Hotels Italy.

1. Hip Hotels Italy joins others in the lauded Thames & Hudson "Hip" series that blends a travel guide with a design resource, focusing on the biggest names in architecture and interior design. Notable establishments in Italy which include olive mills, caves, abbeys and even fishing huts show how all types of architecture can be transformed and renovated for tourism. The color photos are splendid.

No comments about The Sunny Side of the Alps: Year-Round Delights in South Tyrol and the Dolomites.

No comments about Cicerone Walking in Sicily: Short And Long Distance Walks (Cicerone Guide).

No comments about Naples and Sorrento Travel Pack (Globetrotter Travel Packs).

1 comments about Sicily Travel Map (Globetrotter Travel Map).

1. Talk about a piece of junk. I could give my kids crayons and they could make a better map than this. Let's see...hmmm...well, it is pretty and it folds easy. That's about it for the good things.
   
   If you want something that might actually show some towns, roads or details, then this isn't the product for you. With this map, Sicily has almost no roads. What few roads they show, they don't bother to put the road identifier on it. I guess you drive down the purple road until you get to the first yellow one.
   
   Palermo has very few streets. Gee, I thought there was lots more stuff there than what this map shows. Well, maybe my wife's 3rd grade class can use it for something, it sure isn't any good for driving.
   
   Dave

No comments about Italy, My Beautiful Obsession: An American Italophile Falls in Love.

5 comments about Last Trout in Venice: The Far-Flung Escapades of an Accidental Adventurer.

1. I read a few of Doug's columns a while back and remember liking them. So I picked up the book and brought it along on my trip from DC to SF. I started snickering half way into the first story, then the guy next to me on the plane wanted to know what was so funny. I read the passage. Next thing, we were both laughing. Several embarassing snorts later I had to put the book down -- didn't want to see any airplane food flying out my nose. Finished it in chunk-size portions later as Doug suggests in the Introduction. Liked some stories more than others, but for overall laugh count, I highly recommend.



2. I read a few of Doug's columns a while back and remember liking them. So I picked up the book and brought it along on my trip from DC to SF. I started snickering half way into the first story, then the guy next to me on the plane wanted to know what was so funny. I read the passage. Next thing, we were both laughing. Several embarassing snorts later I had to put the book down -- didn't want to see any airplane food flying out my nose. Finished it in chunk-size portions later as Doug suggests in the Introduction. Liked some stories more than others, but for overall laugh count, I highly recommend.



3. No one gets his money's worth out of traveling as much as Doug Lansky does. He might be crazy, what with kickboxing in Thailand and hang-gliding in New Zealand, and while I don't want to fall off a gondola with him in Venice or ride in his rental car in Naples, I do enjoy reading about him. His humorous vignettes give a flavor of their writer's enthusiasm, curiosity, and life-zeal. This is wonderful reading for any traveller, arm-chair or otherwise.



4. You know you are in for an hilarious treat when an author counsels his readers to read his book in "bite size" chunks, as the stories related are just about the right length for a trip to the bathroom.
   In fact, nationally syndicated travel columnist Doug Lansky, author of Last Trout In Venice: The Far-Flung Escapades Of An Accidental Adventurer, even admits that he would be honoured if you decide to keep the book near the throne.

   Readers will immediately respond when Lansky gives us an overview of the various catchy slogans and photos used by travel boards.
   The slogans, no matter how cliché and vague they may be, all seem to send out the same message: "Come and spend you money here."
   As for photos of beach scenes, the author asks, have you ever wondered why they rarely show any people?
   In fact, we are reminded that they often look unstepped on, the skies are always cloudless and the hotels are brand spanking new. Where are the tourists? Perhaps the hotels had to close due to violations of the fire code.

   Effective conveying of comical travel experiences requires keen observational skills, originality, and astuteness.
   All of these elements are prevalent throughout the reading of Lansky's forty-six goofy essays as he gallivants around the world.

   The tale pertaining to Berlin's famous erotic Kit Kat Club is side splitting.
   To gain entrance to the club, our author was required to put on some kind of an erotic costume. As he states, "I,m an erotic fantasy novice, or beginner, or whatever the correct terminology is for someone completely ignorant about the details of kinky behaviour-until Bill Clinton's impeachment trial."
   We accompany the author to an alternative clothing and fetish shop called "Exciting."
   If you have never been to one of these establishments, you surely are in for surprise!
   You can just imagine the scene when Lansky asks the sales clerk if he can have the rubber shorts in his size without the synthetic genitalia!

   Reading Lansky's essays, you get the impression that there is no end to his shenanigans. He apparently is fascinated in trying anything from Summa wrestling, Swiss Yodeling, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, fly-fishing, and whatever else meets his fancy.
   Did you know that hitting a ball in polo is like trying to play golf out of the window of your car while driving down the highway in rush-hour traffic?

   Why does he submit himself to such torture? Is it a learning experience or is he the slapstick comedian who will do anything for a laugh?

   This review was first published on the reviewer's own site
   www.bookpleasures.com




5. "Last Trout in Venice" is a slight improvement over Lansky's one-star first book "Up the Amazon Without a Paddle" (see my review there titled "awful and embarrassing"), but I don't think this has much to do with Lansky's development as a writer. Instead, I suspect it's because the editors at Travelers Tales were less forgiving than his dad (who published Lansky's first book) and trimmed out more of the bad stuff. In other words, the book is better because there is less bad material, not because there is more good material. The result is an essay collection that is usually boring, often irritating, and only occasionally amusing. Most of the time the writing barely crawls above 'amateur' status, and neither does the proofreading--I counted 18 glaring errors in the text.

   Most of Lansky's adventures were not particularly funny at the time, but he's hell-bent on wringing laughs out of them with an over-reliance on a very small toolbox of comedy "cheats"--obvious exaggeration, phony comparisons to celebrities and trite, forced metaphors. His limitations as a writer become even more apparent when he starts recycling his jokes, which weren't original in the first place. At best, Lansky comes off as Dave Barry's nastier and less talented little brother, and at worst, he comes off as simply lame and untrustworthy.

   The thing is, Lansky obviously realizes that his writing sucks, or he wouldn't have included an awkward and embarrassing forward in which he insists that his "ugly American" attitude is really just a persona--in reality, he claims, he is a very sensitive, informed and progressive traveler. He even includes a (possibly fake) character reference from his wife, who also assures us that he's a great guy in spite of his sarcastic and ignorant writing style. This ranks among one of the most desperate and pathetic displays of literary damage control I've seen. If you're not an ignorant jerk, Doug, we should be able to figure that out for ourselves.

   Lansky is truly blessed to be able to travel so extensively and experience so much, which is part of the reason why this book, like his first, is so disappointing. There are countless glaring flaws that show him to be an incompetent travel writer (humorous or not), such as the essay where he recounts going to the Vienna state opera house and makes fun of the show, but doesn't even bother to tell us what opera he saw.

   A talented writer could do so much more. I'm glad I signed this one out of the library, so my book-buying budget will instead go towards authors that are worth supporting, and books that deserve re-reading.

1 comments about Frommer's Italy from $90 a Day (Frommer's $ A Day).

1. I have had mixed results with Frommer's books. I like their maps and guides to attractions... BUT... The hotels they recommend in the lower end category often fall short. I especially did not like their recommendations for Rome.

   The book has a great layout but the hotels need to be rechecked. I would make sure to balance this book with another guide like Karen Brown's or Fodor's... I make sure any hotel I stay in has a good rating in at least two sources....