No comments about Andalucia (Cadogan Regional Guides).

No comments about Step by Step Barcelona (Insight Guides Step By Step).

1 comments about Belize in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture (In Focus Guides).

1. It's good to read these details of the People, Politics and Culture, as the author subtitles it.
   
   The "Adapter Kit Belize" was read more thoroughly and had more useful details before we made our first trip to the country.

4 comments about Special Places to Stay Spain & Portugal.

1. If your planning on going to Spain or portugal, you probaly want to go to the best places there. This book will really help you decide where to go and what to see there. Have fun!



2. We stayed in 6 of his recommendations in Spain. Every one of them was unique - from an old gold mining mansion in Don Quixote country, to a mansion overlooking a castle - some off-the-beaten-track locations that we never would have seen with a regular guidebook. These are places most tourists don't know about. We planned our 2 week driving trip around the inns he suggested, and found them to be the highlight of our trip!! We're using these books every time we travel in Europe!!! The maps are great too!!



3. I like photographs when planning. It helps me feel a bit more secure about my choices. Having lived abroad most of my life, I've seen that drawings can be deceiving. Tons of information though. That's good. But for me, not enough to commit.



4. I don't know what the previous reviewer (05/12/01) was looking at, but it most certainly wasn't this book, which is filled with pictures! Two in color for every place listed, the larger being an exterior view and the smaller an interior view or a view from a window looking out. Another great feature of this book is the Spanish and Portuguese form letters for making reservations--most helpful. I'm already planning to use both the British and French Bed & Breakfast editions; now I'll have to find time for a trip to the Iberian Peninsula also.

5 comments about Voices of the Old Sea.

1. Anyone who has read anything by Norman Lewis knows that he is unquestionably the world's greatest living travel writer and one of the best who ever lived. I have read everything he has written and this is my favourite. It combines stylish simplicity and poetic resonance to create a haunting evocation of a lost time and place. A masterpiece.



2. describes a lost world--a tiny village on the Spanish Mediterranean coast subsisting on fishing and the harvesting of cork. The book is simple and evocative. The reader creates the tragedy himself or herself with the certain knowledge that Lewis is detailing a world, and way of life, that have now ceased to exist.



3. This was one of the most boring dully written books that I have ever read. While the events are not without interest; the change over 3 seasons of a village in Spain from being almost medievally backward to one being transformed by the onset of tourism, the characters are flat and unbelievable. Maybe if you like fishing it would appeal but otherwise I would steer clear. Sorry to be so negative



4. Literate, traveller, teacher, observer, the mold of this type of travelling and beautiful prose will not be seen again, please appreciate his genius and take heart



5. This is the first book I have read by Norman Lewis (d. 2003), and I can now appreciate the encomniums on the book covers and first page: "one of the best writers . . . of our century" (Graham Greene); "magical storyteller"; "the best, and most underrated, English travel writer of the 20th century"; and on and on in a similar vein. VOICES OF THE OLD SEA is an account of three summers that Lewis spent in a subsistence-level fishing village along the Costa Brava coast of Northeast Spain in the late 1940s. As things happened, it also is an account of the beginning of the end of centuries-old ways of life, swept aside by modernization and capitalism.
   
   Lewis does not really decry the changes that slowly begin transforming his particular pocket of rural Spain. Indeed, he rarely casts judgments, other than occasional aesthetic ones. He is somewhat self-effacing. Rather than imposing himself on his hosts and environs, he blends in, and as a result otherwise insular and superstitious locals begin to open up to him and allow him to observe and participate in activities from which outsiders usually are excluded.
   
   But the value and appeal of VOICES OF THE OLD SEA is not so much in its subject as in the telling. Lewis was a superb writer, with a gentle sense of humor and irony. The publisher lauds Lewis as "the father of modern travel writing". If only that were truer. If only more modern travel writers had Lewis's skill and his modesty.

3 comments about Lisbon.

1. This book contains a lot of information about Lisbon, both as a city to be visited and as a city which has inspired novels, films, etc., and the educated tourist can find this book very useful. Unfortunately, I found the book boring. Somehow, I failed to relate to it. Maybe if I had heard of Tabucci and these other cultural figures, I might have gotten something more out of it. I visited Lisbon in 1966 and enjoyed it, and I am fluent in Portuguese, so the problem is hardly Lisbon. But the book just seemed to me to never get off the ground.



2. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The title doesn't do it justice. It should be calld something like Portugal, a cultural and literary companion. It is true, the focus is on Lisbon, but it goes far beyond. Through the sights of Lisbon, it gives the reader an overall view of Portugal's history, literature, cinema, painting, etc.

   There is only one negative aspect. Why are there so many misspellings in the Portuguese words? Not even the name of navigator Vasco da Gama escapes. I almost wish I couldn't speak the language so I would not notice the mistakes and could then give this book more than four stars. Still an excellent book.




3. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The title doesn't do it justice. It should be calld something like Portugal, a cultural and literary companion. It is true, the focus is on Lisbon, but it goes far beyond. Through the sights of Lisbon, it gives the reader an overall view of Portugal's history, literature, cinema, painting, etc.

   There is only one negative aspect. Why are there so many misspellings in the Portuguese words? Not even the name of navigator Vasco da Gama escapes. I almost wish I couldn't speak the language so I would not notice the mistakes and could then give this book more than four stars. Still an excellent book.

No comments about In The Garlic (Santana Guides).

No comments about AAA Spiral Guide: Spain.

4 comments about How Not To Live Abroad.

1. I'm not much of a book reviewer, but I picked up this book recently, merely on the attraction of the title "How NOT To Live Abroad". Hmm, I tought that looked pretty interesting. I was not disappointed, it was a compelling read all around.

   The basic premise of the book is that Shaun Briley (the son of Jon Briley, who scripted the "Gandhi" movie blockbuster) and his girlfriend are living uncomfortably with her mom in the UK, and so decide to go on vacation to Spain to escape the mom. Totally unplanned they end up buying a rural farm house in deep Spain, thinking this would be eternal bliss of sun and coctails. The book cronicles the pair's misadventures in adjusting to that rural life (no modern amenities we take for granted such as electricity, bathroom, etc.), while at the same time describing the ups and downs, and ultimate demise, of the couple's relationship.

   Briley writes with a great sense of humor, and the pages fly by. As a transplant myself (but not to a rural setting), I took an immediate liking to the book, and found it hard to put down. I highly recommend as perfect beach reading for the coming summer!




2. I think the author wrote this book as an act of revenge for what his girlfriend did to him while they were living together in a rural farmhouse in Spain.
   
   It makes for thoughtful reading on what can go wrong if you live far away from the creature comforts of life with electricity, water & food on tap and take it for granted. The author lives in an outlying rural region without any connection to electricity and tap water is from a well. To confound things, the land is not very fertile, as summers can be very hot and rains are not frequent. Only certain types of vegetation can thrive.
   
   I would label this book as "Survivor with Realism" theme. Not your normal "Survivor" series, but what is actually required of you given the constraints of nature. It is not your normal expatriate living abroad squabbling with builders, engaging with townfolk though there is some episodes on that, enjoying wine types of Peter Mayle's world.
   
   A good read if you want to know how the rest of rural Spain lives.



3. I read this in two days!The author documents his move to a small rustic town in southern spain in which he and his girlfriend buy a small home. The accounts of the people he meets and much of the miscommunications between him and the people are very personable and humorous. The author is an English-American so he comes from a mixed viewpoint which means you can identify both with his reflections as well as his initial impressions of the people he meets. I still laugh when I think of his misadventures!



4. This was a great story of the adventure for a young couple who fall in love with Spain, buy a farm and try to make a life without modern conveniences. I laughed out loud many times while reading it and was sorry to have their adventure, and the story, end.

2 comments about Fielding's Paradors, Pousadas and Charming Villages of Spain and Portugal.

1. Not only paradors and pousadas but also alternatives. I like the ink drawings showing the paradors. Very detailed section maps.



2. This September will mark my 6th visit to the Iberian Peninsula. You can easily outline a wonderful car trip using this book alone. It is very straightforward and very honest and the only guidebook that you will need to purchase. You can write to the Spanish Tourist Office for a wonderful map which will have the location of all the paradores and pousadas clearly indicated. Book and map in hand, and you are halfway there. The Spanish and Portugese people have to be among the most gracious people in the world. Use this book wisely, and seek out the less well known regions of Spain. You won't be disapointed. Viva la Espana!