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Rating: 
Summary: Mean spirited at times
Review: a journal of train travel through the americas ---north, central and south. i cant say that i loved this book and at times felt myself skipping through it
Rating: 
Summary: start slow
Review: Having read a few of Theroux's books, this one starts very slow...almost plodding along. It's very hard to read until he makes it through Central America. The characters (people) he meets from the time he leaves Boston until he reaches South America don't seem to add to the story. In fact, the author treats them in a seemingly condescending way. Once he reaches South America, however, the book becomes eminently more readable. I didn't enjoy this one nearly as much as "Riding the Iron Rooster", but interesting in it's own way.
Rating:
Summary: start slow
Review: Having read a few of Theroux's books, this one starts very slow...almost plodding along. It's very hard to read until he makes it through Central America. The characters (people) he meets from the time he leaves Boston until he reaches South America don't seem to add to the story. In fact, the author treats them in a seemingly condescending way. Once he reaches South America, however, the book becomes eminently more readable. I didn't enjoy this one nearly as much as "Riding the Iron Rooster", but interesting in it's own way.
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Summary: Like the final days before returning home...
Review: Near the end of a two week trip to a far off land (for me at least), those uncomfortable things that at first seemed new and exciting start to become annoying and old.It seems like Paul Theroux started feeling this way after his first two weeks... actually maybe even before. He manages to leave his personal stamp of disaproval on every Central and South American country in his wake... er... track. The good thing is that his negative attitude is so obvious that you become desensitized to it, and it starts to feel like the grumpy narrative to a beautiful slideshow presentation by your Great Uncle Horrace. Theroux's descriptions of people and places are so vivid, that his journey becomes less of a personal trip, and more of a documentary film of the beautiful landscape and interesting people that he meets. He is but a character in the film that you can choose to ignore. Sidenote: Before I bought this book I had really wanted to go to the Patagonian area of Chile and Argentina. Since that was the only place that Theroux didn't seem to have a problem with, I instead went to Peru (he both hated it and got altitude sickness there, so I figured it must be a great place... and of course it was).
Rating: 
Summary: Traversing the Americas
Review: Paul Theroux, in his introduction to THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS, states that his wish was to make this "the ultimate book about getting there." As in his other train voyage narratives, this book is about the journey rather than the destination however, as usual, we manage to glimpse quite a lot of the country and people he encounters along the way. Theroux, as always, plays the curmudgeon and misanthrope throughout. This, of course, is the main reason I enjoy coming back to Theroux time and time again. Who needs to read another travelogue of fluffy descriptions of tourist destinations and restaurant reviews?
Theroux seeks "adventure" and he finds a fair amount of it in his train travels through the Americas. Although he speaks against the novelistic approach to travel writing, his own character consistently inserts itself into the story which in my opinion reads much like a novel in a positive way. Politically, the book is dated and we must expect that much has changed in Central and South America over the last 20 years. However, THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS remains a highly entertaining read and I recommend it heartily.
Jeremy W. Forstadt
Rating:
Summary: Can we have an explorer's perspective please.
Review: Paul's books provide a very detailed travel account. But, it appears to be a reporter's view. His writings lack the passion of an explorer. Travelling to distant places is essentially a journey within. Great travelers wouldn't ridicule the places they visit or the people they meet. In this book he seems describing the slums and the poverty of Mexico and other countries. Trust me, not many people want to be poor by choice.
Traveling is a sublime, spiritual & learning experience. It is an opportunity to look beyond our perceptions & bias. His writings are just an account of what he saw, they lack the light of a traveler...
Rating: 
Summary: A Demeaning Look Down at the Little People
Review: There is a timelessness to this odyssey that causes it to be worth reading more than 20 years after its first publication. In a way it is due to train travel not having changed during that period. But also it is the relative absence of change in the scenery or in the social and economic condition of the people along the way. The concept is simple: Travel by train from Boston USA to Argentina and write about what you experience. The execution is something else, and it makes every page quite interesting. Those who have experienced Paul Theroux's travel writing don't have to be convinced of the pleasant experience to expect from this book. For those unfamiliar with his work, this is a very good place to start.
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Summary: An experienced traveller and writer
Review: This is my second book of Theroux. I am especially interested in the tone of his writting. Everything special including danger and culture shock in Theroux's tone would be murmuring, complaining and facetiousness. I am a little bit irritated by all of them at first. After some 2 or 3 pages, I am shock cause Theroux writes his deep thought with easy style and everything shows he is an experienced traveller and writer.
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Summary: Lack of soul
Review: This is the first time I read Paul Theroux's book. Before that I heard and read that he is one of the greatest travel writers in modern times. Granted, this guy wrote well, but his attitude was insufferable. At the end of it, I wonder is this a traveller writing a book on travel or a writer writing a book on travel. This book is almost exclusively about a train journey. PT tried to take train throughout the journey for the sake of it, even though everyone told him that bus was faster etc. But of course he was going to take the train so we read about him whining about its poor condition, its delay, how pathetic the people travelling on the train, how godforsaken the towns were etc. PT had this high and mighty attitude that he scorned about comments by the common tourists (a lower and more superficial class of people on the road whom he was not associating himself with); he had condescending opinion on people reading main-stream books, books which he considered less literarily acclaimed than his own selection on the trip. Oh yes, you get to read about what he read on the trip, with some thoughts and paragraphs included. Being strictly a journey book, PT travelled from point A to point B, with lots of observations and comments on the way, but don't expect him to write a bit about some of the sights he saw along the way (not even Machu Picchu) or some snippets of the history, culture and politics of the places he passed through. He did not even demonstrate a sense of humour! Worse, he was a first-class hypocrite, saying things he thought what the person would prefer to hear instead of his own unkind opinion. PT wrote a very vivid account, a very detailed description on colours, sounds and scents of his journey. But there was something lacking. A story that scored high technically but failed in spirit.
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Summary: Dont throw away your time or money
Review: When I saw this book at the bookstore I imagined it would be very good, a train ride trough the continent!, it is really about complaining on everything, he should have stayed home!, I kept reading because I was expecting it to get better, but it really did not, this was the first and last of his books that I buy, I am sorry but as a traveler I expected much more, I could not imagine a more unfriendly person writting about travels.
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