Average Rating:

.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Elizabeth Gilbert

March 05, 2007
Fantastic and humourous writing - couldn't put it down. Immediately passed the "wealth" to one of my best girlfriends upon completion. Every woman must read this!

Average Rating:

.

Stephen Fry in America

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Stephen Fry

October 01, 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Tim Butcher

January 03, 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

The Good Pub Guide 2009

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Alisdair Aird, Fiona Stapley

October 02, 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

Thailand (Lonely Planet Country Guide)

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: China Williams, Aaron Anderson, Becca Blond, Brett Atkinson, Tim Brewer, Virginia Jealous, Lisa Steer

August 01, 2007
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

The Discovery of France

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Graham Robb

July 04, 2008
A Francophile with a penchant for learning about France while taking cycling holidays there, Robb has written a brilliant evocation of a lost world, when most inhabitants of France from outside the Paris region did not speak French and did not think of themselves as being French, and then an equally fascinating story of how the railway and the bicycle allowed the French state to impose "Frenchness" on the country. The book draws on evidence mostly from pre-revolutionary France, but with enough from the nineteenth century to support the thesis that it was late nineteenth century technology that made the difference. The storied are fascinating - I was particularly amused to read of a (mildish) torture called "putting on pressure" that Breton women visited ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of 'The Great Railway Bazaar'

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Paul Theroux

September 04, 2008
Reading 'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star' is to be transported immediately into the presence of a master of his craft. Perhaps one of the greatest travel writers alive, Paul Theroux revisits the journey he took through Europe and Asia 33 years ago, musing along the way on how both he, and the countries he travels through, have altered over the years.
But where his writing is undeniably engaging, especially when he relates his talks with fellow authors he meets along the way, the conclusions he draws never ascend from the mire of cliches in which he seems to wallow. Thus India is uniformly hot, oppressive and overpopulated, Thailand is a land of beautiful women and the sex industry, Japan is a living embodiment of manga cartoons, and Russia is replete with ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

New Zealand (Lonely Planet Country Guide)

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Charles Rawlings-Way

September 01, 2008
Reading 'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star' is to be transported immediately into the presence of a master of his craft. Perhaps one of the greatest travel writers alive, Paul Theroux revisits the journey he took through Europe and Asia 33 years ago, musing along the way on how both he, and the countries he travels through, have altered over the years.
But where his writing is undeniably engaging, especially when he relates his talks with fellow authors he meets along the way, the conclusions he draws never ascend from the mire of cliches in which he seems to wallow. Thus India is uniformly hot, oppressive and overpopulated, Thailand is a land of beautiful women and the sex industry, Japan is a living embodiment of manga cartoons, and Russia is replete with ... Read More:

Average Rating:

.

Friends Like These

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Danny Wallace

July 03, 2008
I almost set it down after 200 pages. But I decided NO... it will get better. It didnt, just rumbled on at the same old speed. Davina McCall describes Danny Wallace to be a genius- O dear, please.
NOT FUNNY!

Average Rating:

.

Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage: A Cultural Journey Through the Mediterranean from Venice to Istanbul

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Travel and Holiday
by: Francesco Da Mosto

July 10, 2008
The book's characteristics are the elegant, rich in historical and cultural content, insightful but witty and light in touch text and the beautiful photographs of landscape, seascape, buildings, monuments, ruins and works of art which are inextricably interwoven and mutually reinforcing;the impact on the reader is not merely additive but truly synergistic.

We travel with the author from the city of his birth, Venice aboard the Black Swan, a renovated 1899 yawl along trading routes of the Venetian Empire visiting the coastline and islands of the Adriatic, Ionian and Aegean seas with Istanbul (formerly Constantinople)the final destination. Some of these lands were former colonies of 'La Serenissima' and we witness its legacy in the form of medieval fortifications ... Read More: