So you're ready to dive into TRAVEL WRITING? Better see what's floating in the pool first.

Let me be the first to thank Don George and friends for having done us all the favor of creating a Lonely Planet offering for aspiring travel writers. It truly does contain a wealth of helpful hints and contact information for beginners. In fact, my copy has a rainbow mohawk sprouting from the colored Post-its I've tabbed important pages with. But here also lies its greatest flaw. A well planned book should not require the reader to create a haphazard hairpiece to augment its index. This one does.

Of George's eight chapters, fully five of them contain interviews with various authors, totaling 65 pages. I enjoyed them all, but they act as hurdles to readers using the index and should have been contained in an appendix. Further, some of the responses overlap, creating redundant reading.

Along that same line in chapter four, "The Art & Craft of Travel Writing," Don George presents a section called "Five Compelling Beginnings," showing how to hook readers with a good lead. But then a problem arises in chapter five, "Examples of Good Travel Writing," when George shows how to unhook his own readers by using all five of those same beginnings (along with their middles and ends) as examples of great completed stories. I felt as if I'd been had. After reading seven example magazine articles, where one would have sufficed, we finally got back to business. (For my previous three paragraphs I'm subtracting 1 star)

My final admonition: Practice what you preach.

Author Don George states in chapter four, "There is simply no excuse for getting your facts wrong, and you should not expect sympathy (or future work) from an editor if you do."

Uh-oh, pay attention here Don: When your sample writer Stanley Stewart's penned, "a huge sky decorated with mare's tail clouds," you asked readers, "have you ever seen clouds depicted this way before?"

Oops. Yes I have Don. Mare's tail is a term used for cirrus clouds. Don't fire yourself. I forgive you. (But I'm docking you another star.)

Despite these petty annoyances and enough literary padding to qualify as a wonder bra, TRAVEL WRITING is still a great tool; just one that you will have to seperate from the clinging rakes and shovels.

My recommendation: Buy it, but get some Post-its too.

Cutting right to the chase, this is a delightful read. Travel books can range from deadly to enlightening...and this is on the truly enjoyable end of the scale. There is nothing more tedious than a 1000 page Fromer's guide to some place you will never visit in two lifetimes. Don George has done a nice job assembling the contributors and arranging the order of pieces...some by old hands and others by promising new comers. I particularly enjoyed the one by Joshua Clark.

This book is both sobering and inspiring, but most importantly, practical. Starting from an important place, "What It Takes To Be a Travel Writer," this may well convince you that travel writing isn't really a dream job for most people. Relationships with close friends can be strained, travel isn't as fun when it's a job, pay isn't usually too great, and there is such a thing as burning out from traveling too much. Some travel writers even forget to stop taking notes when they're on an actual vacation.

From there, the book delves into the practical aspects of travel writing- finding your story, getting published, using technology in your field research. This knowledge should give you confidence that you can make your dream a reality, provided you live simply, have realistic expectations, and market your work strategically.

Probably what makes the book the most useful is that it is just packed with interviews of working travel writers- about ý of the book- and this ensures that you will have multiple perspectives on what travel writing is about.

I was torn between buying this book and the Travel Writer's Handbook, which was also rated well last time I checked. But it seemed the past reviewers for this book were more articulate, and so I presume they were actually writers...

This is one of the best guides to any kind of writing that I've run across -- and by far the best to the difficult craft of travel writing. I've used it in my classes this summer and have been recommending it to every writer I know.

The chief author, Don George, is himself a traveler, travel writer, travel editor and teacher of travel writing, and all his experience comes into play in this compact, well-organized book.

The basics are all there, but the book goes far beyond them, adding a short history of travel literature; an outline of the ``quintessential qualities'' a travel writer needs (not least flexibility, frugality and passion); detailed advice from successful writers and major editors; even a list of travel-literature classics.

This book is destined to be a classic of its own -- one I wish I could have turned to when I was setting out in the field 25 years ago. And, like Lonely Planet's guidebooks, it's compact enough to slip into a backpack and take on the road, in case the muse hits -- as it too often does -- on a distant beach or mountaintop.

-- Catherine Watson, former travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, is the author of ``Roads Less Traveled -- Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth'' (Syren, 2005).

This book is not about "how to write a book about Travel Writing" but how to market it, how to find places to sell it, etc. In all, not even ten pages of usefull stuff about writing about yours travels, what I was looking for. But, if you want adresses and become "pro" perhaps, it could help some.