Travel Books--Which are your faves & which suck?

[BroadAbroad]

[omisan]

I'm a big fan of TimeOut guides. They just cover individual cities (and surrounding regions) but I find them most suited to my travel needs - covering touristy stuff, off-the-beaten-path stuff, dining, shopping, and a good focus on nightlife and bars They also have all the historical and cultural context like all the other books, but I think they do the best job of covering everything a city has to offer in one place.

As for books by country, so far I've liked Lonely Planet.

I recently read a great guide comparing all the different travel book series, who they appeal to, what they cover, how much of a tourist they make you look like, but I can't remember where!

[worldwidemike]

Just as you probably shouldn't depend on just one person's advice, I feel the same way about guidebooks. I normally read several on a destination. My faves are:

1) Lonely Planet - good, all around guide with great maps (photocopy them before leaving so you don't have to pull out the guidebook while you're navigating around town).

2) Fodors - for the sights, not places to stay, usually. They have a nice, evocative style of writing when creating an image of a place in your mind. Usually they're what I read first to find out where I might want to go.

3) Rough Guide, Let's Go - Like LP, I call these "realistic" guidebooks. If a place sucks, they'll tell you so (unlike Fodors, who will try to make it sound nice). The three are also good on public transport times and options, and so are usually the one I take with me overseas.

Don't Like:
Insight Guides - nothing but a bunch of pretty pictures and text rewritten from an encylopedia.
Frommers - not sure why they never seem useful to me...maybe the "neither fish nor fowl" thing...

worldwidemike

[BroadAbroad]

Yo. Thanks for the insight! Very helpful ya'll!
Word.