England as You Like It

• Paperback - 05 March, 1996 - Ballantine Books
• Usually ships in 24 hours
• By: Susan Allen Toth
• ISBN: 0345401905

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Reviews by readers

ENCOURAGEMENT TO BE YOUR OWN TRAVEL AGENT

So far, this book is absolutely incredible. The amount of detail is a bit baffling at first, better too much than too little. It gives suggestions for how to find excellent hotels and B&B's, good maps, restaurants, there are even suggestions on packing and keeping a travel journal. We're leaving for the British Isles in a matter of days, and I've been planning for the last 9 months. It would have been so much easier if I'd had this book. I can't wait to start planning our next trip. I don't like to use travel agents because it's been my experience that unless you are paying them to plan your entire vacation, you will be far from the top of their priorities list. Also, it's so much fun to plan your own vacation. This book is invaluable.

When An Author Creates A Completely New Genre...

What happens? Some don't get it, and others do. I agree wholeheartedly with Amazon.com's reviewers here insofar as the absolute wonder of these "essays" that are travel guides but not really the kind you would compare with a road map. This is great literature - along with its humor, savvy, sophistication and most importantly its understanding that America (albeit the beautiful) has a lot to learn from the ancient culture and art of that wonderous English Isle.

Objective theory, subjective application

Having just finished Susan Allen Toth's earlier collection of essays "My Love Affair with England," I knew her travel-tastes run to gardens and rural pathways, and her writing-tastes run to lengthy descriptions of gardens and rural pathways. So I didn't have any hesitation in harvesting from "England as You Like It" a bunch of useful ideas, resources, and destinations, and then skimming over (or skipping entirely) yet more essays about gardens and paths. Other readers may well enjoy those parts of the book too -- I'm not slighting them: they seem popular enough with other reviewers. They're just not my particular cup of Twinings.

What I found most memorable -- and pertinent to my own pending trip to England -- were things like the "thumbprint theory of travel," her methods for making long flights in the economy section more bearable, and her defense of the virtues of packing heavy instead of light. Her M.O. of staying in one set of lodgings for a week or two at a time, and using that as a base from which to explore nearby areas, certainly seems both more restful (as a vacation) and more worthwhile (as a means to get to know a place) than a frenetic rush from hotel to hotel as you check off one "must see" attraction after another. And her comment that the first thing she does on arrival in London is to hit a bookshop to stock up on good, detailed maps is an idea I definitely plan to appropriate.

The first chapter, "How to Be Your Own Travel Agent," also had many useful ideas and recommendations for thing to look into. Since the book was published in 1995, however, many of the specifics she gives could be replaced by a red rubber stamp reading "Use the Internet!" Still, for giving a traveler enticing ideas of places to see and ways to see them, anyone England-bound could find this book worth spending a little time with.

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