Rating: 
Summary: An interesting, rambling journey
Review: "Paul Theroux is _so_ overrated!"It was a line I would hear over and over again during the past month I spent with 'The Great Railway Bazaar' every time I fielded the inevitable "So...what are you reading now?" question so popular amongst writers and journalists. Having finally finished the compact tome, I understand my colleagues' antipathy: Theroux makes it look so easy. Take a trip, write about it with lots of descriptive curliques and viola! money in the bank. Theroux has a sharp eye and a neutral without being self-effacing voice that makes for the best travel writing. He is a master of detail, meticulously recreating the sense of place and space. As a writer, he is superb. And yet...I also sympathize with the criticisms that he exploits a place, visiting only for the writing, dismissing the deeper truth and more complicated understanding for the lurid, the sensational, the scene and the steam. In 'Railway Bazaar' at least, Theroux at least makes no pretentions of being anything more than the passing observer. They are snapshots, vignettes viewed through a train window and filtered through half a bottle of gin. It is personal, and pretends to be nothing more. It also serves as a reaffirming paean to the joys of alcohol and travel. As a book, it has its stops and gos. Slow at the start, it picks up spead through Central Asia, finds its confident footing in South and Southeast Asia, and then flounders through Japan and Russia. At its best, it captures a time and place, such as Vietnam at the end of the war or bits of India. Perhaps I found those parts more coherent because I traveled similar roads some 30 years later, and found it interesting to compare how things have changed - and how they haven't. I suspect other readers will find similar experiences: it is a book for the already seasoned traveller, not the armchair enthusiast.
Rating: 
Summary: Train travelling by reading.
Review: "Train travel animate my imagination and usually give me solitude to order and write my thoughts: I travel easily in two directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window, and at the interior rim of a private world of memory and language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination." The words are from Paul Theroux's book The Great Railway Bazaar, where he takes us on a train journey through Asia. The book has excotic chapters, starting with The 15.30 - London to Paris, taking us via The Direct - Orient Express, The Night Mail to Meshed, The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpus, The Trans - Siberian Express and so on. Names and places I dream of, and would like to go to - one day.
Paul Theroux has been there, and he has been there with an open mind and his pen and paper to take care of this world of memory and language. This is fun reading. Some people call Theroux a rasist, but I don't agree. Theroux travels with an open mind and really see people and places where he goes. The way he shares his experiences with his readers is so rich and funny, you almost can feel the smell of the meal of old onions wrapped in a dirty piece of newspaper his travel companion is having, or you feel the dust in your eyes from the dry countryside you are passing. I bought this book at an European airport when I was out travelling, and has read it as a "travel"-book, reading on planes, railways, busses, in cars and so on. And my eyes have been opened to see the people around me - not as grey everyday fellow travellers, but as all different human beings. And from Paul Theroux I have learned that strangers are not actually strangers, but people who can show me more of a mixed world when I take the time to start sharing part of my life with them. Britt Arnhild Lindland.
Rating:
Summary: Train travelling by reading.
Review: "Train travel animate my imagination and usually give me solitude to order and write my thoughts: I travel easily in two directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window, and at the interior rim of a private world of memory and language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination." The words are from Paul Theroux's book The Great Railway Bazaar, where he takes us on a train journey through Asia. The book has excotic chapters, starting with The 15.30 - London to Paris, taking us via The Direct - Orient Express, The Night Mail to Meshed, The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpus, The Trans - Siberian Express and so on. Names and places I dream of, and would like to go to - one day.
Paul Theroux has been there, and he has been there with an open mind and his pen and paper to take care of this world of memory and language. This is fun reading. Some people call Theroux a rasist, but I don't agree. Theroux travels with an open mind and really see people and places where he goes. The way he shares his experiences with his readers is so rich and funny, you almost can feel the smell of the meal of old onions wrapped in a dirty piece of newspaper his travel companion is having, or you feel the dust in your eyes from the dry countryside you are passing. I bought this book at an European airport when I was out travelling, and has read it as a "travel"-book, reading on planes, railways, busses, in cars and so on. And my eyes have been opened to see the people around me - not as grey everyday fellow travellers, but as all different human beings. And from Paul Theroux I have learned that strangers are not actually strangers, but people who can show me more of a mixed world when I take the time to start sharing part of my life with them. Britt Arnhild Lindland.
Rating:
Summary: Great Opportunity Wasted
Review: A great opportunity wasted. This is my first Theroux. I am envious for he had the opportunity to travel all around the world that too in train. But, I am disappointed to see such a piece of work from one of the famous names in travel writing. As an Indian, I know how interesting a long train journey is. You meet people from a cross-section of society, of different background, professions, lifestyle, religions, languages, habits and hopes. The author is satisfied with watching the mannerisms of people than understanding a bit of these. I find him to be a racist. Also, why does he mention about prostitutes so much, that too in a train journey? Rather than enjoying a trip of such magnitude, depth and scope, the author slips into complaining too often and has a certain contempt for anything non-western. With such a closed mind, I don't know why one should take the pain of travelling so much. If one needs to see and hear what he wants see and hear, better write fiction than travelogues. All said, the book is a good read if you don't think too much. His descriptions of the landscape are fantastic and his writing skills are beyond argument. Don't expect to learn about people, culture or lifestyle from this book. But you come to know about the great trains that ply in different continents. The contents are out dated, but still you can keep it in your shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Travel by Trains
Review: An unique travelogue--A journey through Asia by trains. Theroux shines in his detailed narrations and vividly depiction of interesting people he met and all his fascinating encounters throughout his long trip. He travel by trains. For examples, He took the Rajdhani Express to Bombay,The North Star Night Express to Singapore, The Hikari Sper express toKyoto and many more. He observed their cultures and even made friends with some of the locals on the trains.
Rating:
Summary: Less than I expected
Review: Despite it's previous bestseller status, I found this book to be quite slow and it didn't grab my concentration. Theroux traveled by train from England to Turkey, India, Singapore, Japan, several other countries, and back across the whole of Russia. The tone is rather arrogant and I was disappointed that most of his time seemed to be actually spent on the train, rather than in the places he traveled to. Reading about his many train companions and the train staff was not as interesting as hearing about the people on the street he spoke with. I found the chapter on Vietnam interesting, but his trip home across Russia found him horribly depressed, and his negative attitude clouded the details of an experience that so many others have recorded as marvelous.
Rating:
Summary: Less than I expected
Review: Despite it's previous bestseller status, I found this book to be quite slow and it didn't grab my concentration. Theroux traveled by train from England to Turkey, India, Singapore, Japan, several other countries, and back across the whole of Russia. The tone is rather arrogant and I was disappointed that most of his time seemed to be actually spent on the train, rather than in the places he traveled to. Reading about his many train companions and the train staff was not as interesting as hearing about the people on the street he spoke with. I found the chapter on Vietnam interesting, but his trip home across Russia found him horribly depressed, and his negative attitude clouded the details of an experience that so many others have recorded as marvelous.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book, GREAT COVER
Review: I loved this book, and I love the new edition with Steve McCurry's picture on the cover. Finally, the quality of the cover matches the inside text!
Rating:
Summary: A series of interesting vignettes.
Review: I recently re-read Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar and immediately was awash in memories of innumerable train journeys across the length and breadth of my native India. This is an excellent read both for train lovers (whom the exotic trains Theroux rides will captivate) as well as readers who enjoy travelogues. To be fair, this is less a travelogue than a series of vignettes covering Theroux's journeys through various Asian countries. Theroux makes no attempt to develop an understanding of the cultures he travels through but is content to describe the train itself along with a handful of anecdotes about the people he meets on each leg of his journey. Fair enough, this is not after all a sociological text but a travel diary of sorts. And it is in description that Theroux's strength lies. He has the ability to make an anecdote seem so real as to make the reader a part of the scene. The pace of the book varies with the stop and start of each journey and I guess every reader will prefer some parts to others. Plus of course, it is a bit jarring when one reads this book today, since the tide of history has greatly changed many of the countries Theroux traversed. Still, culture is slower to change than politics and that keeps much of the book relevant even today.
Rating:
Summary: A look at Asia in transition
Review: Like all of his non-fiction travel pieces, Theroux spends too much time congratulating himself on his courage and complaining about almost everything. However, he made this trip at a very interesting time in history (interesting to one born in 1962, at least). One has the sense that an era is ending in much of Asia. (It is unfortunate that he seems to have lost his notes on the trans-Siberian segment of the trip.) The perils that he encounters are a bit more imminent than those in his other books, and his skill as a writer makes the book highly readable.
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