2 comments about The Scottish Islands: The Bestselling Guide to Every Scottish Island.

1. What an extraordinary work! Mr Haswell Smith has certainly putin the legwork when researching this book. The detail that he has goneinto is quite unusual with works of this type, that usually seem tofarm out different parts to different people. As a reference book for people who wish to visit any of Scotlands smaller Islands it is invaluable,(as a sea kayaker I use it often to help plan my trips)and as a fireside read when the sea is too wild to paddle, it helps to fire the imagination. As a piece of work you just have to admire the author's attention to detail. I only wish that he had written this a few years earlier and saved me a lot of effort in researching my own trips.



2. I have been sailing the Islands off the Scottish West coast for nearly 20 years now. If ONLY I had this book when I started! It is just wonderful. The attention to detail for those using the sea enables good choices of destination to be made on every day you are out there whatever kind of boat you use. The detail on history, mapping, wild life, plant life, harbours, anchorages all add up to a great resource every day on the boat. The authors own drawings and paintings are so true to the place. And then, what a great joy I have in reading it by the fireside on winter nights when I plan the next great adventure amongst these Islands. It is a book, that once read, you will never put it down again if there is still an ounce of sea-faring in you. It just makes you dream again and be there! A must-buy if ever there was one even if you never go there in your life, its that good. Dont miss it.

   AND we have had many many hours on the boat late at night with maybe too much grog inside strongly debating the absolute definition of an 'Island' which starts the book. And yet we cannot get any crew to all agree on a single view..

No comments about The Pentland Hills: A Walker's Guide (Cicerone Walkers Guide).

No comments about The Intelligent Traveler's Guide to Historic Scotland.

No comments about The Canoe Boys: The First Epic Scottish Sea Journey by Kayak.

1 comments about Trout & Salmon Rivers and Lochs of Scotland (Trout & Salmon).

1. I used this book when I fished in Scotland recently and found it to be invaluable. The information was exactly what I needed, i.e. location, access, what fish one can expect to catch, a commentary on the best tactics and who to contact to arrange permits. The information is organised by Ordnance Survey map number and grid references are given when appropriate.

1 comments about A Sense of Belonging to Scotland: The Complete Collection.

1. If you've ever been to scotland and want to remember, or if you've never been there and want to see what it looks like - these are perfectly gorgeous pictures. ever since we went i have been trying to find pictures that really capture the mystery and beauty, and these truly do. the fact that the pictures are of places well-loved by famous people is just icing on the cake. it is fun to see the places that are attached to the people and to read their descriptions and their reasons for loving a certain area. a perfect book all around.

No comments about A Wee Guide to the Picts (WEE Guides).

No comments about The Landscape of Scotland.

2 comments about Scottish Journey.

1. Muir combines vivid descriptions of people and scenes with passionate discussions of socialism, unemployment, and the spiritual poverty of the Scottish people in the 30's. Truly a political poet's book



2. Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey (Mainstream Publishing, 1935)

   Edwin Muir is a pretty good writer, when he sticks to travelogues and abstract philosophy. He doesn't do so in Scottish Journey, though one would think so from the first hundred pages. Scottish Journey is meant as (and was commissioned as) a travelogue, and for the most part, Muir sticks to the template. He writes well of the Scots countryside, and passably of Edinburgh, slipping in bits of philosophy here and there, as is to be expected in any good travelogue. As well, Muir is an extremely quotable writer; his words are clear and precise, and draw excellent pictures in the reader's mind.

   Muir was, however, an ardent Socialist of the closed-minded sort, as much as he professes otherwise. This affects the book in his long chapter on Glasgow, which he starts with a screed against Industrialism (he always capitalizes the word, I might as well, too) and capitalism. Humorously, he attempts to say that Industrialism, in and of itself, isn't all that bad. He does so in a paragraph that spans almost two and a half pages. The first and last few sentences are of the opinion that Industrialism isn't all that bad. It's the middle hundred or so sentences that shoot the argument in the foot, as he catalogs a list of the horrors he sees in Glasgow. One wonders how it's possible to write all these things and frame them with "it's not bad." It would be kind of like a pagan writing the same of the Inquisition, from the evils that Muir ascribes to Industrialism.

   What's worse, he can't see the forest for the trees. In one breath, he talks about ho a capitalist system can't take population contraction into account; in the next, he's talking about unemployment. And he sees no correlation between the two, or at least none he's willing to admit. At one point, perhaps the book's nadir, he says, while discussing the rise of the Scottish Nationalist party, "....If such devotion and fidelity are not to be admired, then all our ideas of morality are mistaken." Leaving it as it is, he infers that no such thing could possibly be true. Yet not five pages later, at the beginning of his chapter on the Highlands, he has little good to say about the morality of a people who are so embarrassed by the twin hills known as the Paps of Jura, one of Scotland's biggest tourist draws at the time, that he couldn't find a postcard that showed them clearly anywhere in the town. One is tempted to see the inconsistencies as a (sub?)conscious undercutting of Muir's own arguments, but nothing else in the book points to it; the man's to solid and straightforward a writer to resort to such tricks.

   Overall, though, it's worth checking out for the travel writing and the easy read. Just take his political outlook with a grain of salt. ** ½

No comments about Michelin Map No. 501: Scotland.