Rating: 
Summary: Too nice
Review: This might be interesting as a guide book if you're visiting some of the town in central Turkey , such as Sogut, Polarli and Kangal ( sorry for the spelling, Microsoft Word can't do those Turkish umlauts and I's without dots and g's with squiggles) that she talks about. They're off the beaten tourist track and I suspect that's with good reason. Settle finds them fascinating. She's evidently a nice person and a fine writer; that's her problem as a travel writer.
The most readable travel writers, like Theroux and Waugh, can dip their pens in acid. Settle gushes. She loves Turkey too much. She admires every ancient building she sees and explains in detail, in very fine language, what is admirable about each mosque, tombs, castle and house. It gets repetitious. She goes into museums and describes their contents at length. She never meets a Turk she doesn't like.
It livens up when she describes some misadventures at the beginning and at the end (and her Turkish bath experience in Istabul) but on the whole it doesn't work as a travel book to be read from beginning to end for entertainment.
Readers will have their own opinions about her accounts of twentieth century Turkish history. That's a touchy subject I wouldn't touch with a barge pole. When it comes to ancient history, she finds Urartians lovable and Hittites hateful and Mother Goddess worship everywhere ( and loves the word "chthonic").
Rating:
Summary: The best for Turcophiles!
Review: Beautifully written, although she does make a couple of historical boo boos, she loves Turkey so much, all of her fans will forgive.Add this one to your collection and you'll read it more than once, I promise.
Rating: 
Summary: The most realistic book about my country
Review: Being a citizen of Turkey, but of Kurdish origin, I can say that this is the best book that I have ever read - written by a foreigner about Turkey. It is suprising how some other reviewers seem to know the state of Kurds better than we know ourselves. I am very astonished that foreigners think so one sided thigns about us. Most Kurds live outside the southeast and in Kurdistan also Turks feel ill. For most the problem is called poverty. Whatever happens it is always the normal citizens who get the punishment from foreigners - mostly aggressive Greeks. This is very sad because most Greeks never even meet a Turk or a Kurd. If they meet a Kurd, they meet a communist expatriot who has nothing to do with majority of Kurds. Very sad. Thank you for Mary Lee Settle, she saw the reality and wrote very nicely about it. At least she SAW the reality, the reviewers did NOT. Allah Korusun.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible little book, and equally incredible author..
Review: By the end of the first chapter, I was howling with laughter when Mary had to run for her life. She left Greece for Turkey when Greek altar boys started chasing her with stones! So much for my dreams of going to Greek island, I hated what they did to her in that Greek Island. In Turkey, she started traveling to faraway places, tracing the Selcuk past. This book is really about the Selcuk Turks more than anything else. Along the way she learned the meaning of 'arkadas'. It was very touching to see how well she understood this very Turkish concept. I recommend Turkish Reflections to those who want to have more in-depth knowledge about Turkey. Mary Lee, please go back and tell us more about the hidden villages and fascinating characters in forgotten corners of this amazing country. Love to all, Vicki.
Rating:
Summary: Good comparison of present with past
Review: Excellent viewpoint, as the author returns after a 15 year absence to the place she once called home. As full of the mystery and complexity of a little-visited country as one might expect. And beautifully written.
Rating:
Summary: discovering turkey
Review: I chose Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections" as my introduction to researching a trip to this magnificent country. Her love for the land and people is evident throughout the book. A great beginning to planning a trip to Turkey or as a means of recollecting one's travels at the end of the journey.
Rating: 
Summary: don't believe everything you read
Review: I read this book on a bus ride from Ankara to Istanbul in the hopes that it would help me decide where I wanted to go on my next visit to Turkey. As far as that went, it was a fine book. My itinerary for the next trip is set. But most of the time I found the book quite irritating. The Mother Goddess stuff was a big turn off. The author always made it sound like this stuff is just true, and everyone knows it, but almost everything she said about Amazons and the Great Mother of Anatolia is pure conjecture. And then she seemed to feel such a strong need to be an apologist for the Turks, and that got annoying too. I understand there are a lot of ancient hostilities between the Greeks and the Turks, the Armenians and the Turks, etc., but it seems to me you can love Turkey, and love the Turks as a people, and still recognize that over the course of their history they've done some pretty heinous things. Even if the Armenians sided with Russia during WWI, and I'm sure some did, the genocide was so hugely disproportionate, and pretending it didn't happen is no way to come to terms with history. It's like Americans who don't want to talk about slavery or the genocide of the Native American population or the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. I guess I just don't see why the author felt like she had to side with the Turks against all opponents, as if they were the poor innocent victims of history. Sometimes they have been, and sometimes they haven't, and you can say the same for pretty much any nation or ethnic group, including, say, the Greeks. Bottom line, the book catches much of the flavor of Turkey and takes readers along to interesting places, but it would have been better if the author didn't state as apparent fact things that are very much in dispute. Maybe she doesn't claim to be a historian, but most people will have no reason to question the historical remarks she makes, and plenty of them are wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating mix of history, mythology, and people of Turkey.
Review: In 1972 the author went to Turkey and stayed for three years because it was cheap, a good place for a writer of limited means. Fourteen years later she returns to the country and people she obviously has a great affection for. She writes that, in Turkey, nothing is wasted. Stones from Greek and Roman temples are used to build Christian churches during the Byzantine Empire and then are converted to mosques during the Ottoman times. Her book also wastes nothing, mixing bits of history, archeology, mythology, and religion to construct a Turkey that is, at once, thousands of years old and modern. This is a great primer for anyone planning on going to Turkey. My wife and I are going in the fall and, after reading this book, I can't wait.
Rating:
Summary: Romance and Joy in a Place of Stone
Review: Mary Lee Settle introduced me to a vastly different Turkey than the one I was familiar with through history books, popular sentiment and news articles. As an American, my interest in the "outside world" is often surprising to those from other lands. Turkey never seemed warm, romantic or joyful... until I read and visualized "Turkish Reflections". Rarely has a literary work caused me to experience a place so richly. From the descriptions of Turkish warmth in Bodrum to mind-bending jaunts through 8,000 year old settlements, Settle paints a portrait of a land deliciously steeped in hospitality, tolerance and texture. Political realities notwithstanding, this book establishes Turkey as an extremely desirable place to sojourn.
Rating:
Summary: interesting read
Review: Settle writes compellingly, and she really captures Turkey in this memoir. One of the best travel books I've read.
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