Robertson Books

In the past 12 years, I've reread this gem 4 times - and look forward to the next time. The leading characters are superbly portrayed, as the good guys try to protect a deceased scientist's uncanny system that predicts Aussie weather, 12 months in advance.. The manuscripts are protected by two binge drinkers, both in their eighties, both with colorful cattle drover backgrounds. A key aspect of the plot: Upfield offers colorful insights into the differing psychological nightmare/illusions associated with various types of liquor - and gets these distinctions into the unraveling of the plot.. The central old-timer comes across much like the old geezer prospector in Treasure of Sierra Madre. Plus: Bony's wily ability to outsmart his police-bosses is top-rate here. Don't miss this one!

Of all the books I have read on golf this one stands out. Joseph T Shaw captures the obsessive dimension of golf brilliantly, relegating 'instruction' to a secondary position. The narrative takes us to Scotland, to windswept coastal links, a crusty old professional and, of course, a lovely young woman who can hit it a mile with barely a movement of her lithe body. The jokes are well done and the description of an infamous golf match in Musselburgh is brilliant. Amidst all the human drama reside several classic pieces of golf instruction, beautifully written and guaranteed to inspire. This is a book for the ages, an important historical record and a first rate piece of instruction on how to swing a golf club. If you are obsessed with golf, this book has been written for you.

No beer lover should leave home without it! Excellent reviews of individual beers from the smallest village braueries to the largest Munich producers. All beer styles included- light, smooth, pils to strong, rich, doppelbocks. Stock up arriving and departing southern Germany at Karl Maruhn's largest beer store in world (south of Darmstadt) for all the highly rated beers from breweries you can't visit. The book's weakness is locations/lack of maps to find the breweries. No problem, buy a German map atlas, ask for directions, but take the author's advice and seek out every beer he highly recommends. You'll have a great time. Prost.

This is Barry Humphries from his later Dada days. It's a collection of everything weird, outlandish, unexpected and literally bizarre. Where else would you find a photograph of a three-legged man and other oddities of nature.

There is no easy way to classify, or even describe, this eclectic collection or anthology of the bizarre. There are pages on sexual topics. There are pages showing the effects of many different ways to mutilate pictures of the Mona Lisa. There is a wealth of detail, with the one theme being the bizarre nature of the contents.

This book is a lot of fun if you have an appreciation of the bizarre. It's classical Barry Humphries, playfully satirizing the world with its own bizarreness.

I've made >20 visits to France all together. Here are my reviews of the best guides....to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the Metro. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.

Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

Reading this book is a little like eating chocolate chip cookies: you read one of the short chapters (laughing all the way, or sometimes crying just a bit), thinking that then you'll go do some serious work--and then the next one draws you in, making you think, "well, I can afford just one more--they're small, after all!" The whole thing is a delight, beautifully written, witty, articulate, and thoughtful. The titles make you want to keep reading ("My Father Kills my Mother," "My Brilliance Goes Unrecognized," "Of Protestants and Potato Soup," for example), the epigraphs reveal the variety of Stuckey's reading, and the totally non-self-deprecating blurb on the back of the book (clearly also by Stuckey) offers a glimpse into his ability to mock himself. This is a terrific book--one that will amuse and engage all readers and that will prompt other people either to write their own memories or to sit with friends and family talking over the joys and pains of growing up. It's also bound to make everybody wonder how little boys ever make it through to adulthood!

I've always been a giant comic book nut, whether I'm purchasing a book for the art, writing or just because the freaking cover kicks butt, I've been collecting since 1988. Over the last year or so I've been struck by graphic novels and trade paperbacks, its almost like watching an entire season of a TV show on DVD, no commercials and no waiting. Of course sometimes I can't even wait for the Trade Paperback, ala Alex Ross's "Justice", recently I was looking around online and came across "The Boys" by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, you might recognize Garth Ennis from Marvels MAX Punisher line or Preacher, and artist Darick Robertson from Transmetropolitan and Peacemaker: Nick Fury, together these two have created "The Boys", a book which has quickly jumped up my comic meter scale to like #3 maybe even #2. It deals with superheroes in a whole new light, a light which reveals their actually a bunch of "A" holes and have no real regard for human life. Oh did I mention that their big perverted nut jobs, that should be noted as well. So in comes "The Boys" a group of super powered bad a**'s that go around dishing out serious medicine to these behind closed door perverted supermen, in this book there refereed to as "The Seven" a very similar version of the Justice League. The book is so well written, and the characters so likable, it's ridiculous; if I could find a poster of the lead character "Butcher" it would be on my wall right now. The book was so violent and anti-superhero that DC Comics canceled it, luckily for us Dynamite comics picked it up! I've went absolutely ballistic over this book, I had my wife read 10 minutes after I got done, and now she's reading it a second time, and she doesn't even really enjoy comics. If you like no holds bars, down right violent adult themed graphic novels (and when I say adult themed, I don't mean there's anime sex on every page, there's not, I mean violent action and language all the way, of course there is at least 2 sex scenes in the books, so beware) where was I....oh BUY this book, its well worth every penny. This trade paperback collects issues #1-#6, the single issue of #7 just came out this June, and is selling like hot cakes.

Any book which attempts to analyse the art and the life of an artist of Whiteley's magnitude has to fall short. However, this book is a good attempt and has been written by two experts on the great man's work: his former wife Wendy and Barry Pearce, curator of the Art Gallery of NSW. It contains fairly good plates of some of the artist's best work, although much is of course missing. I'd recommend this along with the aritst's own catalogues as the best place to start in any attempt to understand the artist and his work.

Howard W. Robertson's poetry connects me to the universe. His poems are like the viewfinder of a camera where the focus moves from the specific to the cosmic and back. His words evoke an organic undulation along the threads that join us multidimensionally through time and space, interpersonally and ecologically. Roberton's poems breathe with the cosmos, exhaling the beauty of daily life. (Submitted by my friend Tamara)

One read and all you want to do is write, write, write. Because this book teaches you how. Without it I would have surely flunked my undergraduate English courses. But with it, I am a master of writing.