Lovely rainy Sunday--must make time to read

                  Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day:

                  One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide

                     by Doug Mack

It's hard to review a book that you neither liked nor disliked.  Although Goodreads' 1 to 5 star rating system attempts to soften the impact of a 2 by labeling it, "It was ok," a 2 rating still seems like a "D" to me.  And a D, although kinder than an F, is still a failing grade.

I finished it, but if it had been fifty pages longer, I probably wouldn't have...and that observation alone says "2". Why my negative vibes? Just this--it reminds me of the Peanuts comic strip. I love Peanuts, and Charlie Brown is the star of Peanuts. But I wouldn't take a trip with him.

Here's the story:  taking the guidebook used by his mother in 1967, Europe on Five Dollars a Day, Doug Mack sets out on his own European tour to see, hear, and feel the places that were popular before travel guides became big business.  He deliberately eschews other forms of research--no Google, modern guidebooks, or Facebook--so that he can experience the Old World unprepared and unexpected.  And he takes along his Mother's letters to his Father, written during her own ten-week tour.

It's a great premise for a book.  Occasionally it's really funny.  The only substantive criticism I have is that it contained too much "history of travel guides since Frommer's history-changing edition."  But still I didn't like it.  Dare I say the author was always keeping a part of himself back, hiding from his own camera lens?  That's how it felt.  The bits of his Mother's letters were interesting, just interesting, and if they gave him any insight into his own feelings--or hers--I didn't see it.

He did seem to change a little during the trip, and if he writes another travel story, I might just like to read it.