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Women's Fiction
There's No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure (Travelers' Tales Guides)

There's No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure (Travelers' Tales Guides)

List Price: $12.95
Your Price: $9.71
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Cute, diverse, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny
Review: These brief excerpts from larger works are enjoyable slices of travel humor. Each story ends, Reader's Digest style, with an unrelated one-paragraph anecdote. Also, dotted throughout the text are boxes of quotations. This is a fun introduction to humor writers that you may not have heard of before. For politically correct sourpusses, there's one funny story about an Irishman who comes to Virginia and endures various cockups. And yes, the one about the baboon in the movie theater is indeed startling and funny. All in all, a fun read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: hilarious accounts highlighting murphys law
Review: these writers accounts make you want to travel simply on the off chance one of these 'mishaps' will occur on the journey....i passed it out to my friends...most of us are travel agents and have heard many similar stories that give an enlightening view of 'the road less traveled'....id also highly reccomend a book called 'i should have stayed home', a similar pretext but some of the stories are a bit more frightening

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excellent collection of truly funny travel stories
Review: this collection of short humorous travel stories elicits many belly laughs.the authors obviously write about their own experiences.the book almost inspires the reader to get out of her chair, travel and have a blast.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: after many horselaughs, my advice is 'get it'
Review: This is a collection of humourous travel stories by some pretty capable authors. They write from different perspectives and about places all over the world. I found them all amusing in one way or another, whether due to turn of phrase, comical circumstances or just flat-out ridiculousness of the moment. However, I like MAD Magazine, too, so this should be considered when deciding whether you would like the book.

Marked down a star only because it's moderately expensive for a book that's not especially thick. If you read a lot of travel essay books that are quite serious about it all, this will offer you a bit of amusing diversion.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: after many horselaughs, my advice is 'get it'
Review: This is a collection of humourous travel stories by some pretty capable authors. They write from different perspectives and about places all over the world. I found them all amusing in one way or another, whether due to turn of phrase, comical circumstances or just flat-out ridiculousness of the moment. However, I like MAD Magazine, too, so this should be considered when deciding whether you would like the book.

Marked down a star only because it's moderately expensive for a book that's not especially thick. If you read a lot of travel essay books that are quite serious about it all, this will offer you a bit of amusing diversion.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very funny, as only true stories can be.
Review: This is a VERY funny collection of true stories. Many passages caused me to laugh out loud over the absurdity of situations that can occur on anyone's travels to unknown lands. When I wasn't laughing out loud, I was continually chuckling inside. These stories hit my funnybone in the way that only true misadventures can. And they strike a familiar chord for anyone who has spent even a short time traveling internationally, giving this book the welcome appeal of one big inside joke.

The collection spans the spectrum from everyday tales of language difficulties that we all face (these stories include encounters in London, Italy, India, and others) to zany stories of taking a monkey to the movies in Cameroon, meeting a "General" in Italy, and an alien abductee policeman in Peru. We hear of an Irishman's hardship in Virginia. P.J. O'Rourke tells of a vacation to Heritage USA. And a few of the unfortunate story-tellers have the honor of reliving their humiliation as the locals repeatedly retell the story for the amusement of all comers.

The writers range from the famous (e.g. Dave Barry) to the lesser-known. We are also treated to short tidbits scattered throughout the book, including a few "Deep Thoughts" from Saturday Night Live's Jack Handey.

An extremely entertaining book that I can whole-heartedly recommend to anyone who enjoys travel and humor.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Perfect In-Flight Distraction
Review: This relatively brief volume (184 pages in paperback) is the perfect departure-to-arrival gate light read - and I do mean light - for any plane prisoner wishing to isolate him/herself from the petty annoyances of modern day air travel, and harvest a few chuckles in the process. The travel misadventures described therein brought to my recollection the time I locked myself INSIDE my car in Portsmouth, England, the time I was grandly fleeced by gypsy pickpockets in Rome, and the experience of donating blood in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). I found the most amusing of the 28 stories to be Sterling's "The Deep Fried Potato Bug", Mayle's "The Great Goat Race", and Wallace's "Shipping Out". So, unless you're so unfortunate as to have never journeyed outside of you own neighborhood, you're sure to find something here that strikes a cord of sympathy or remembrance, or an outright funny-bone.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Thoroughly delightful!
Review: Was I reading the same book? I didn't find the authors whiny nor bathroom humor abudant. I thought the book was fun -- although I'm glad I waited until I was back home to read it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Laughter is the best Medicine
Review: When we are bombarded daily with news of the terrible state of the stock market, the threat of terrorism and the possibility of loosing one's job, there is nothing comparable to a good belly laugh.

THERE'S NO TOILET PAPER ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED edited by Doug Lansky perhaps is just the antidote we need.
To fill the prescription the editor has collected 28 travel essays composed by 20 different funny writers that when read together have a fine cumulative and varied effect.

To set the mood, the editor prefaces this compilation of humor essays with a quotation from radio and talk show host Garrison Keillor: "Humor is not a trick. Humor is a presence in the world-like grace- and shines on everybody."

The opening volley of these discourses recounts how the editor had to figure out how to use the men's room in a public library in Holland.
Now you may ask, what is so difficult about knowing how to use toilet facilities?
However, as our victim reiterates, you practically needed an engineering degree to open the stall, as there was no doorknob.
Furthermore you could not crawl under or over the door, as there was no crawl space under or over the door.
Once the all-important handle was secured from the appropriate authority and the door to the stall had been opened, another complication ensued. How to get out of the stall as you forgot to take the doorknob in with you?

Bill Bryson, who has been described by The Times (UK) as the "funniest traveler alive" and by the Daily Telegraph as " here is a man who suffers so his readers can laugh" relates how his travel agent booked him into a hotel in the 742 arrondissement in Paris.
The hotel was a charmless neighbourhood somewhere on the outskirts of Calais.

David Barry tells about his sojourn in London with his son and as he affirms, "London is a popular foreign place to visit because they have learned to speak English over there. Although frankly they have a long way to go. Often, when they get to the crucial part of a sentence, they'll realize that they don't know the correct words, so they'll just make some silly ones up."

Other raconteurs include Peter Mayle, John Krich, Carl Franz, Richard Sterling, Lara Naaman, Mary Roach,

These are only some of the collection of wacky stories and experiences contributed by

Laugh and the world laughs with you and cry and you cry alone.
These are only a few samples of the 28 essays written by 20 funny writers, who are probably the best in travel humour, that remind us to laugh and not to take ourselves seriously when traveling. Life is too short! In fact it is usually these experiences that we remember rather than the meal we ate at some high priced restaurant.
Appropriately the book deserved to win the Best Humour Travel as chosen by the Small Press Book Award.

One criticism I do have, however, is that printed on the back cover is the following statement: "in these pages you'll find some very funny people, including Art Buchwald, David Letterman and Steve Martin..."
When you try to find the essays of these writers all you are given are very brief jokes or sayings attributed to them.
This is somewhat disappointing and misleading to someone who does not have an opportunity to flip through the book before purchasing it.

This review first appeared on the reviewer's own site
www.bookpleasures.com


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