A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller (2006)

Just couldn't get into this one. Too many good books on the shelf calling my name! Maybe I'll try again someday..... ( )

This book was a terrible disappointment. I generally love Mayes' writing but found her rather insufferable in this selection. Much duller than her other books, it also shows a fairly nasty side of Mayes that I didn't like. Throughout the book she goes on rants about how things aren't up to her standards, leaving rental homes that had already been paid for because of tacky decor or because it was closer to a busy road than she would like. On top of that, and more grating to me was her constant berating of other people she encountered. She and Ed would giggle over some woman's choice of attire, this one being so out of fashion, that one looking like a sofa. The descriptions of overweight people was particularly galling. Describing one mother as an "albino hippopotamus" and depicting in detail her rolls and bulges because she dared to wear a white bathing suit in public - how dare she! There was one endearing chapter in which they visit Fez (although Ed was sick throughout this visit so perhaps without an audience to share her Mean Girl giggles with, she's less obnoxious). Unfortunately the Fez chapter was a mere 30 pages of 417. Not nearly enough to save the book from itself. I come away from this one really displeased with the author. I won't be reading more of her work. ( )

Your enjoyment of this book will largely depend on how much you like the things Frances Mayes likes -- food, flowers and antiquities, to name a few. The locales she and her husband visit are varied, but she spends most of her words for those interests. Very much a diary, including friends in the telling, it's theme is quite loose, finding yourself in other places. Unlike her previous works, she shows a nasty side here, with unkind (and unnecessary) comments about the passengers on a cruise she took. ( )

Dull, dull, dull. ( )

Struggled with getting into this book. Nice description of place but read more like a diary or daily journal. ( )