Travel Books

Getting Inside London’s Natural History Museum – Travel Book Review

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You might have thought that the secret life of a natural history museum is what you see in the Ben Stiller movie Night at the Museum, but science writer Richard Fortey tells the real truth in his book Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. Fortey worked at London’s [...]

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Book Review: Drink Play F@#k

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Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man’s Search for Anything Across Ireland, Vegas and Thailand by Andrew Gottlieb keeps ending up in the travel narrative shelves – not least of all because it’s clearly cheekily reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love – and it reads like a travel narrative too. Traveler Bob Sullivan, the “one man” [...]

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Finding Nino in Italy – Book Review

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Marc Llewellyn’s new book Finding Nino tells the story of Llewellyn, his wife, new-born baby and dog moving to the Italian island of Lipari. Spending a year or two in a Mediterranean country is not really the makings of a new and original travel story, although many of the most famous predecessors seem to focus [...]

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Book Review: Friends Like These

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Meeting Ninjas in Japan and a famous sportsman in Australia? Danny Wallace’s book Friends Like These has a long subtitle which goes a fair way to explaining the whole book: “My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play”. That’s pretty much exactly [...]

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Book Review: Frommer’s Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands

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With a close friend about to embark on a month in Ecuador including a trip to one of the destinations I’ve always wanted to get to, the Galapagos Islands, I thought it was a good time to look at the new second edition of the Frommer’s Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands guide. The front cover [...]

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Book Review: Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons

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Italy’s a common destination for travel writers, but not so many of them head to Siciliy and decide to circumnavigate it on a Vespa scooter. But that’s what British travel and food writer Matthew Fort did and it led to his book Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa.

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Book Review: The Best Travel Writing 2009

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One of my favorite gifts for armchair travelers is the annual compilation of travel stories put out by the people at Travelers’ Tales, and The Best Travel Writing 2009: True Stories From Around the World lives up to my expectations.

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Book Review: The Ethical Travel Guide

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The new 2009 edition of The Ethical Travel Guide: Your Passport to Exciting Alternative Holidays by Polly Pattullo and Orely Minelli starts with forty pages of discussion on the topic of ethical travel, written by Polly Pattullo. There are facts and figures on the state of tourism in the world at the moment, and then [...]

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Backpacking Basics for First-Timers

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Budget backpacking may be all that’s left for many of us when the world financial crisis hits our travel plans, so although Shane Gladigau’s new book Backpacker Basics: For Your First International Trip might be targeted at 18 – 25 year olds, the market might have just got a lot broader.

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Travel Books: New From Rough Guides in 2010

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It’s been a while since we checked in on the new travel guide books being produced by Rough Guides, and they’ve had a busy start to the 2010 publishing year. You’re in luck if you’re planning a trip to any of the following destinations, because they have hot off the press guides ready for you: [...]

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Book Review: Fun on Foot in New York

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Fun on Foot in New York, by Warwick and Nola Ford, has a long but informative subtitle: “The runners’ and walkers’ guide to New York City and its surrounds in New York State and New Jersey”. This basically sums up exactly what this book is about. The introductory section of Fun on Foot gives useful [...]

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Book Review: Australia’s Best Eco-Friendly Holidays

Being an eco-friendly traveler is getting ever higher on the agenda these days and with the new Australia’s Best Eco-Friendly Holidays: Over 1,000 Unique Travel Experiences by Ken Eastwood, part of the Explore Australia series, there are plenty of opportunities for willing tourists to find sustainable and environmentally sound activities throughout Australia.

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Book Review: Rick Steves’ Germany 2009

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Germany’s cities are not sexy destinations like Paris or Rome, but they certainly have a lot to offer – and that’s the message that comes through in the most recent Rick Steves’ Germany 2009 guide. With some cities given a real boost, others, however, are not spoken of so highly, and most of the country [...]

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Travel Book Review: Good Advice for Traveling With Young Children

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Many new parents – even those who were travel addicts – might decide that the time in which their children are under five years old is a time to stay home and take small, simple vacations. They need to read the new Rough Guide to Travel With Babies and Young Children for a bit of [...]

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Book Review: 100 Greatest Trips

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There’s no disputing that the late 2009 edition of Travel + Leisure magazine’s glossy coffee table book 100 Greatest Trips is a beautiful book, but it should really be renamed “100 Greatest Trips To Places Western Tourists Are Likely To Go”. While all the continents are represented in the book, there’s a huge emphasis on [...]

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Italy Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time to Simon Capp

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With an internet-based translating job and a young family, Simon Capp thought it was a great time to take over and live abroad for a year or so, and that’s how the book Italy? It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time was born.

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Book Review: One Planet from Lonely Planet

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The old adage that says a picture is worth a thousand words seems to hold true especially well for travel. Browsing through Lonely Planet’s One Planet: Inspirational Travel Photographs, a collection of some of the best photos from the Lonely Planet Images Library, will give you plenty of inspiration for your future travels; alternatively, you [...]

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Tour the World’s Smallest “Nations”

Lonely Planet’s Micro Nations is a travel guide book with a difference. It’s a tour of the world’s “micro nations” – tiny pieces of land that think they’re legitimate nations. Technically speaking, some of them are, at least according to a 1993 convention, but neither the United Nations or any other “real” country agree.

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Serve the People: Jen Lin-Liu on Cooking in China

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Plenty of travelers are also big fans of eating, and especially of trying the local cuisine – which makes Jen Lin-Liu’s new book Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China sound very interesting. Since Lin-Liu has gone on to found the Black Sesame Cooking School in Beijing, she seems the right person to write [...]

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Book Review: The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations

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The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life by Pam Grout is more than just another Top 100 style travel book. Volunteer vacations (aka voluntourism) are becoming more and more popular – Grout quotes a 2008 study which says 40% of Americans would like to do some volunteering while on vacation – and finding volunteer [...]

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Travel Deals of the Week January 26 2008

Here’s a list of travel deals for the week of January 26 2008.

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Book Review: Murderers in Mausoleums

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As Jeffrey Tayler points out in his new book Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing, we hear a whole lot about Moscow and Beijing in the news these days – and thousands more tourists visit each city every month – but we don’t hear much at all about [...]

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Book Review: 500 Places to Take Your Kids

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Better than many of the current flock of “places to go before …” travel guide books, Frommer’s 500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up by Holly Hughes and Julie Duchaine makes a sensible point: there are some places that you can visit that your kids might enjoy the most while they are [...]

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Lonely Planet’s Year of Festivals Book Review

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Deciding where to go on your next big trip is sometimes difficult – it’s a big, wide world out there. But now that I’ve got a copy of Lonely Planet’s new A Year of Festivals: A Guide To Having the Time of Your Life, choosing a destination gets easy, and it all depends on the [...]

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Lonely Planet Tips for Best Travel in 2009 Review

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Lonely Planet is making a habit of publishing lists of must-visit travel spots and there’s another one just out: Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2009. This book of lists is said to contain some 850 different destinations arranged in various lists, including in a special section on water, with 75 ideas for “water-related travel”.

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Book Review: Burma, The Alternative Guide

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Burma, also known as Myanmar, is usually in the headlines to highlight its democratic problems and the struggle of Aung San Suu Kyi, and there are some groups which advocate travelers should avoid making visits to Burma. However, for those who decide it’s a good idea to get to know this country better, Elena Jotow [...]

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Book Review Beijing Confidential by Jan Wong

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With this decade’s Olympic interest in Beijing having already reached its peak, I still found a lot of reasons to read Jan Wong’s Beijing Confidential: Lost and Found in the Forbidden City. Jan Wong is not exactly a local, but she’s of Chinese origin and has spent many years both living in and reporting about [...]

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747 Things to Keep You Busy In Flight

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It’s pretty hard to find anyone who really enjoys flying these days: whether it’s checking in, waiting at the boarding gate for a delayed flight, being up in the air or waiting for your luggage at the other end, there’s a lot of moments where boredom can set in.

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Book Review: Strange Telescopes in Moscow

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There are ever more travel narratives coming out of Russia, and Strange Telescopes: Following the Apocalypse from Moscow to Siberia, the new book by Daniel Kalder, is certainly one of the more unusual ones – in fact the “strange” of the title is definitely an apt adjective.

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Get Etiquette Tips from Going Dutch in Beijing

It’s always good to know something about the etiquette and customs of the country you’re going to travel to – and Mark McCrum’s newest book Going Dutch in Beijing: How to Behave Properly When Far Away From Home is an entertaining way to get informed.

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