{"id":72,"date":"2005-05-16T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-16T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading2\/?p=72"},"modified":"2005-05-16T16:09:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-16T16:09:00","slug":"postcards-from-europe-by-rick-steves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/2005\/05\/postcards-from-europe-by-rick-steves.html","title":{"rendered":"Postcards from Europe by Rick Steves"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know Rick Steves. I’ve never seen his TV show, taken one of his tours, or used one of his guidebooks. Perhaps if I had I’d have found his Postcards from Europe<\/a> more interesting. The book follows him on a whirlwind tour of Europe, revisiting many of the places he takes his tour groups or has written about in his guidebooks. The trip is so quick (no more than two days in any city) that we don’t really learn anything about the places he visits.<\/p>\n

In his defense, the book is supposed to be more about people than about places. But it fails on that level too. Conversations that clearly never happened are repeated to illustrate various cultural stereotypes: Italians talk with their hands and ogle women; the French don’t shower and are rude; Americans are in a hurry and expect modern conveniences; Even if these sterotypes are true, they’re nothing new.<\/p>\n

The most interesting parts of the book are his recollections of past trips and the stories about how he got into the travel business. The older stories have the ring of truth and the adventures he recounts are spontaneous, not planned for the purpose of retelling.<\/p>\n

At the end of the book he acknowledges that the conversations are fictionalized and that the trip didn’t really happen that way, that it was really three trips he’s strung together. The revelation is hardly a surprise. The book reads that way. I think it’s a mistake to take a trip just so you can write a book about it. You can’t force interesting conversations and experiences. First you should have the interesting conversations and experiences and then you should look back on them and say, “hey, that would make a good book” and then maybe you’d have a good book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know Rick Steves. I’ve never seen his TV show, taken one of his tours, or used one of his guidebooks. Perhaps if I had I’d have found his Postcards from Europe more interesting. The book follows him on a whirlwind tour of Europe, revisiting many of the places he takes his tour groups […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biosauto-biosmemoirs","category-non-fiction","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}