Resorts Books

I think Mackinac Island: Hisotric Frontier, Vacation Resort, Timeless Wonderland is the best all around book about Mackinac Island that is on the market today. It has detailed information about the Islands history and geological evolution that is still very readable. This book covers the many vacation and resorty aspects of the Island also. If you are looking for a readable text book with all the general information about Mackinac Island you could every want, this is the book for you!

I read an older edition of this book from the library (1988, I believe). It's very informative and entertaining to read, and even covers some landmarks on the island which are no longer existent--something I have not come across in other Mackinac Island guides just yet. The authors even made use of "flashbacks" to try to transport the reader into past eras--a soldier in Fort Mackinac, Victorian visitors to the island, a yacht race, etc. (Though these did get a little silly at times.)

However, the entire text was filled with numerous horrible typos, spelling errors, and grammatical errors which should have been learned about in grade school and eradicated in a simple line edit. As informative as the text was, I quickly lost a lot of respect for the authors seeing as they didn't comprehend simple English. It was a library book and I itched to use a red pen throughout the entire thing. Does nobody use copy editors anymore?

I sincerely hope that in subsequent editions of the book, including this one, the authors checked out a grammar manual and fixed their errors so that the book would read more professionally, as any published document should. This would have been a great book, deserving of four stars, if not for such simple yet repetitive and irritating problems.

This comprehensive well designed guidbook is informative, accurate and offers new opportunities for me and my canine pals.

Helpful descriptions and paw ratings of dog-friendly hotels in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. However, they omit many of the smaller cities, and for the cities they do list it would be nice if there was a list of hotels that didn't accept dogs so you'd know they checked them. 'Doing the Northwest with your Pooch' lists many more hotels and many more cities (just no descriptions). We recommend 'Pets Welcome' as a useful additional cross-reference that is worth its price because of its hotel descriptions, but do not rely on this book exclusively. The authors donate 5% of book proceeds to the Humane Society of the United States.

Another winner from James Stevenson!

Set at the turn of the 19 th century, this story is a visual delight with a light-hearted message for kids and adults alike. Little mouse Hubert and his rather straight-laced parents vacation at a seaside resort (a beautifully pictured Victorian). Hubert discovers that he's the only kid there, and that the other animal guests are not very interested in him.

Then, Hubert has the good fortune (and the curiosity) to meet Alf, the hotel groundskeeper. He shows Hubert that "there's plenty to do around here...but you have to keep your eyes peeled." Together they enjoys some unexpected joys of nature, and Hubert takes a thrilling ride in Alf's homemade glider.

My five-year-old and I enjoyed this very much. The pictures of late 19th century houses and trains are richly detailed, from the candelabras to the stenciled ceilings.

Stevenson effectively conveys how joy can be found in seemingly boring places. It takes some curiosity,and sometimes some adult guidance to discover that joy. A fun book for kids and adults: Highly recommended!

This is the book that grows on you, as a parent. My older child received it as a gift when she was around 4. I didn't see much to it, but my daughter asked to read it over and over again. By the hundredth reading I came to see that to a four year old Hubert's entertainments, while rather ordinary activities, are quite engrossing. The message that friends come in all ages and where you least expect them is quite reassuring. When my second child became addicted to the book I realized it was a real winner. Both my kids like to read it night after night -- both around the age of four. Hubert's activities are interesting to them, and the beach hotel setting is just a little bit exotic. I suppose fuddy-duddy parent characters are to be expected. Maybe to the kids they don't look any more fuddy-duddy than their own! The illustrations are wonderful, and kids like the cartoon aspect of the text.

Hauntingly beautiful engrossing summer read. This book sticks with you like sweat hungry flies in the oppressive Florida humidity. Captured the mood of the era just right and gave me all the seediness about it that I wanted. Enjoy this great off-the-radar book with a mint julip in an old creaky beachfront house with hosiery draped over Tiffany lamps for optimum pleasure.

The Transformation is all about hair, and widows and Cubans, but it is mostly about hair. Set in 1898 with the century almost gone, and the automobile coming, the story centers on the wig maker Lucien Goulet III - Manufacturer of Ladies' Imperceptible Hair-Pieces and Gentlemen's Invisible Coverings. Escaping a shady background in France, the mysterious perrupuier has found a new home in Tampa, Florida, a world of perpetual sunshine, oranges, mosquitoes, swamps, and the occasional hurricane.

Author, Catherine Chidgey paints a picture of Tampa as a happening place. The railroad magnate Henry B. Plant has just build the Tampa Bay Hotel, with its tangle of Moorish minarets and aches, "its Byzantine domes and its thirteen crescent moons, the Hotel resembles "fairy-tale" castle anchored at the water's edge. Taking a room in one of the minarets, Goulet takes advantage of the Hotel's wealthy clientele, while inwardly sniping at their self-indulgent, decadent ways. In tones of sycophantic menace, he declares that he can work miracles with "a hank of hair, glue and a net."

As Goulet relates his adventures in hair, his narrative interweaves with those of Marion Unger, a local widow and orange grove owner whose silver-blonde tresses so entrance Goulet, and Rafael Méndez, a young cigar-roller who has come to Florida to escape the war in Cuba. He too is drawn to Marion, and drawn into the dark side of Goulet's dream-weaving business: scavenging refuse tips for combings, and eventually scalping the dead. Goulet, whose obsession with Marion's hair, manipulates both and the transformation he determines to make for it, is the driving force of the plot.

The Transformation is obviously meticulously researched and it shows, especially in the pages devoted to Goulet's obsessive rambling about his past in France and his wordy discussions on the art of the perrupuier. Florida of 1898 in recreated in convincing, immediate detail. There is lots of attention paid to Rafael's background and his family back in Cuba, and Chidgey deftly evokes the political climate leading up to the Spanish American War, when the American soldiers were amassing in Tampa hoping to liberate Cuba.

Chidgey portrays Goulet as some kind of hair sucking monster, a man devoted to fakery and deception. In one instance he mocks a customer by employing two actresses to mimic her for his own entertainment. But as the book progresses, Goulet's gleeful inhumanity becomes almost pantomimic and unreal, a caricature of a self-made, foppish and dandified man. In the search for hair, he gloats, "Once I found a stillborn child, but the little hair I could recover was too downy for my purposes."

The Transformation is full of Chidgey's confidant commanding prose, and vivid atmospherics, but the meandering narrative often hampers the overall effectiveness of the book. This reader never really cared that much about the characters or what happened to them - they all seem to sink into the background, weighed down by the author's rather substantial prose. There should be at least a modicum of emotional payoff involved in this story, but Goulet and his obsessions swamp the narrative, sucking the life from all around him, and in the end neither his flighty customers nor most readers will really be that concerned or worried over his fate. Mike Leonard May 05.

It brings family resorts together in one place with detailed reviews. It has various price ranges though I think many would not choose those in the lower price range. It focuses more on resort than family. A little spotty in some places

These were the strange last words spoken by Helen Stoner's twin sister Julia as she lay, collapsed and dying, just two weeks before her wedding. Helen has approached Sherlock Holmes because her stepfather, Grimesby Roylott, owner of a decrepit old manse, has moved her into her sister's room just a month before her own wedding, saying her own room needs "repairs." Now some of the strange, night-time events which mystified her sister just before her death are occurring again. Strange, low whistles occurring around 3:00 a.m., Roylott's baboon and cheetah prowling freely in the dark, a band of gypsies camping on the property, and mysterious clangings have left Helen terrified.

The appearance of Roylott at Holmes's Baker Street residence, where he threatens Holmes physically and bends a fire poker in half to show his strength, make Holmes even more determined to help Helen to protect herself from this maniac. After Watson and Holmes gain admittance to Helen's quarters one night, they make additional observations--a bell pull which is not attached to any wiring, a new ventilator, a sound like a steam valve, and a bed that is anchored to the floor. How could all these weird observations be related "the speckled band"?

As always, the melodrama of events is set into sharp relief by Holmes's rational deductions. Doyle's well known ability to build suspense by capitalizing on the fears of his characters (and his readers), his use of vivid dialogue, his imaginative descriptions, and the quick pace of the action make this story compelling reading. The real mystery is not who killed Julia Stoner (and threatens Helen), but how the murder took place, and in this respect "Speckled Band" is one of Doyle's most elaborately constructed and most fascinating stories. Reputed to have been Doyle's own favorite story, it is the only mystery which Doyle himself adapted successfully for the stage. Mary Whipple

THIS BOOK IS A USEFUL GUIDE TO THE HOTELS OF THE PAST WHICH SHAPED THE AMERICAN IDEA OF VACTION AND LUXURY. ARRANGED BY REGION, IT IS QUITE USEFUL IN PLANNING TRIPS TODAY, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN HOW AMERICA TRAVELLED. IT IS A SHAME HOW MANY OF THESE GRAND HOTELS HAVE FALLEN AWAY AND THIS BOOK IS INVALUABLE IN CAPSULIZING THOSE THAT ARE LEFT. ITS TOO BAD THAT THERE ARE NOT FURTHER VOLUMES TO EXPLORE THE SUBJECT MORE EXTENSIVELY

Some of the worst cynics in the world are travel writers, people who have been everywhere, done everything...and like absolutely nothing any more. So it was quite refreshing to come upon Tom Wilmer's "California Coast Getaways," composed with what seems like genuine wide-eyed curiosity about, and sincere appreciation for 32 classic inns, bed-and-breakfasts, and dude ranches sprinkled from Santa Cruz County down to the Ojai Valley (what's often called California's "Middle Kingdom"). Wilmer offers first-person field reports that not only provide basic info, but introduce readers to the owners of his favorite old hotels and suggest some low-impact adventures--from kayaking to gliding--to keep vacationers occupied between sumptuous repasts and poachings in the hot tub. Historical anecdotes keep the narrative rolling. Did you know, for instance, that Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle built the Montecito Inn at Montecito? Or that Czar Nicholas II's last vice-counsel to the United States once owned a cabin on the Santa Cruz site of today's Babbling Brook Inn? I look forward to seeing (in some future book) Wilmer's take on the resorts/inns along the rest of California's long coastline. His book is a friendly, fascinating, sometimes funny traveling companion

If you are studying the era, the mid 19th- early 20th century focusing on the mineral springs health craze, and thought that it was all in Battle Creek MI, then this is a delightful wakeup... A very well researched work on a little known aspect of that period. . . I had the pleasure of living in Dr. White's beautiful house (featured several times) and my parents still live there. This past holiday, we walked the Springs area, now easily found thanks to the historical marker. There is no sign left whatsoever of the Hotel, but with this book, it is easy to stand by the spring and look up the hill and imagine the grand thing. It is a great thing that this book was compiled, the area is so sparse that the passed down telling of the history has all but died out... Thanks to the authors for work. Dennis C. Bentley

I was looking for something a bit lighter, but found the book give details I wasn't looking for. Had numerous pictures of early Baguio.