The Lonely Planet Guides: What’s Not to Like?

ARAB GULF STATES: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia & the United Arab Emirates (Travel Survival Kit) by Gordon Robison (Lonely Planet, $15.95 paper); BOLIVIA (Travel Survival Kit) , second edition, by Deanna Swaney and Robert Strauss (Lonely Planet, $16.95 paper); FIJI (Travel Survival Kit) , third edition, by Rob Kay (Lonely Planet, $13.95 paper); FINLAND (Travel Survival Kit) by Markus Lehtipuu and Virpi Makela (Lonely Planet, $15.95 paper); MYANMAR (Burma) (Travel Survival Kit) , fifth edition, by Joe Cummings and Tony Wheeler (Lonely Planet, $13.95 paper); POLAND (Travel Survival Kit) by Krzysztof Dydynski (Lonely Planet, $17.95 paper); SCANDINAVIAN AND BALTIC EUROPE (On a Shoestring) by Glenda Bendure, et al. (Lonely Planet, $17.95 paper) , and TREKKING IN GREECE (Walking Guide) by Marc Dubin (Lonely Planet, $15.95 paper).

When I wrote regularly on wine, there was one California winery (its name is not important) whose new releases I always hated to confront each year. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the wines. On the contrary, they were uniformly, consistently good, vintage after vintage, variety after variety. That was the problem, in fact. There was simply never anything new to say about them; they were almost tediously good.

Now that I’m reviewing travel books, I feel much the same way about the Lonely Planet guides. Though I haven’t been to many of the places they cover--most of us haven’t, and that’s part of the point--they are by all accounts uniformly accurate and up-to-date. They are certainly comprehensive, well-written, intelligently arranged, politically and environmentally aware and critical without being--as the jargon-slinger would put it--judgmental. What’s not to like?

The basic Lonely Planet guides are tagged “Travel Survival Kit.” Often dealing with destinations in which “survival” might well be a literal concern (Myanmar, for instance, is not famous for its official hospitality to tourism), these are well-rounded travelers’ companions, offering the most mundane details about, say, currency exchange and the eccentricities of the local telecommunications system alongside thoughtful mini-essays on local art forms or wildlife.

Other Lonely Planet guides are labeled “On a Shoestring,” aimed at travelers on a budget--not necessarily to exotic locales, as the present Scandinavian/Baltic title indicates. (The first-ever title from this company, in fact, was “South-East Asia on a Shoestring,” said to have been “put together in a backstreet Chinese hotel in Singapore in 1975.”) Then there’s a handful of city guides, a series of phrasebooks (sometimes treating whole regions instead of a single language) and a fledgling “Walking Guide” series, including general information in an abbreviated form but concentrating on detailed walking, hiking and trekking tours of various lands.

This latest bunch of titles seems every bit as good as the last bunch. Personally, I wouldn’t dream of going to any of the places they cover without taking the appropriate title along. They’re also sort of fun to just sit down and read, maybe with a glass of tediously good California wine at hand.

Quick Trips:

SEATTLE CHEAP EATS , edited by Kathryn Robinson and Stephanie Irving (Sasquatch Books, $9.95 paper). A varied collection of mini-reviews, 300 in all, that will be of great interest to any budget-minded visitor to (or resident of) the Emerald City. It is unfortunate only that at least some of the 17 or so contributors are given to precious turns of phrase and to infelicitous observations. (Of the menu at an Ethiopian place, it is said that the “amazing typos add an unexpected degree of authenticity”--meaning what? That authentic Ethiopians are poor spellers?)

BACKROAD TRIPS & TIPS: Glovebox Guide to Unpaved Southern California , second edition, by Harry Lewellyn (Glovebox Publications, $14.95 spiral bound). A no-nonsense manual for enthusiasts of four-wheel-drive, mountain bike and other off-road exploration, with a section on navigation and another on survival skills, some environmentally sensitive advice and a series of off-road site descriptions with non-scale maps.

FODOR’S SHORT ESCAPES IN BRITAIN and FODOR’S SHORT ESCAPES IN FRANCE, both by Bruce Bolger and Gary Stoller (Fodor’s Travel Publications, $13 each). These are nicely annotated walking tours (with maps)--25 per volume--through “villages, landscapes, and historic places tourists never see.” For instance: Robin Hood and Bronte country and the ancient harbor of Boscastle in Britain; Omaha Beach and the hills above Giverny in France.