Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas

Rating:
Summary: Golden Tales of the Buddhas
Review: An excellent book that summarises Borobudur's past and archaeological symbolism. It is a light and informative read of the ancient Buddhist monument in Central Java. The photography is excellent, with lots of close ups of the reliefs. Very often you get whole pages of pictures which tell a story of their own. It's really worth buying this because you'll definitely read it more than once.

Rating:
Summary: Relaxing read while passing the time
Review: I read this book while visiting Bobobudur over 4 days. It perfectly suited the relaxing atmosphere of my vacation.

The first few sections are devoted to the history and the archaeology of the site. Each successive chapters are devoted to the bas reliefs which tell 3 major stories of Buddhist texts.

Personally, I found the latter sections on the stories harder to follow since the books only gives bits and pieces of the story (and sometimes the photo illustrations, which are in great abundance, do not follow the text) and I am not at all versed in these stories. I would have much preferred
a more detailed book on the history and archaeology of the monument. But perhaps that is more difficult to come by because it is not a deeply studied area.

But I think the photographs more than make up for any perceived deficiencies on my part. Each page has at least one big photo which occupies half of the page and that makes it a great coffee table book to browse.

Rating:
Summary: Relaxing read while passing the time
Review: I read this book while visiting Bobobudur over 4 days. It perfectly suited the relaxing atmosphere of my vacation.

The first few sections are devoted to the history and the archaeology of the site. Each successive chapters are devoted to the bas reliefs which tell 3 major stories of Buddhist texts.

Personally, I found the latter sections on the stories harder to follow since the books only gives bits and pieces of the story (and sometimes the photo illustrations, which are in great abundance, do not follow the text) and I am not at all versed in these stories. I would have much preferred
a more detailed book on the history and archaeology of the monument. But perhaps that is more difficult to come by because it is not a deeply studied area.

But I think the photographs more than make up for any perceived deficiencies on my part. Each page has at least one big photo which occupies half of the page and that makes it a great coffee table book to browse.