Great Lonely Planet Review!

Having used our fair share of Lonely Planet guidebooks through our travels, we’re super excited by their wonderful recent review of To Timbuktu!

To Timbuktu is a breath of fresh air from a sometimes contrived, bloated genre…Weinberg’s charcoal illustrations perfectly complement Scieszka’s caught-in-the-headlights style prose… Her constant use of dialogue and innovative ways of introducing facts without being boring (the ‘TV Late Show’ interview with Laos is wonderful) make for an easy and entertaining read. That’s not to say it’s all froth and bubble. Scieszka constantly reviews her emotions and has a knack of raising poignant questions not only about her own work and motivations, but about those of the wider community, the roles of NGOs, and the impact of poverty, education, religion and tourism. Her insights into Mali, from an outsider-trying-to-be-insider (can you ever be anything else?), are both revealing and sobering.

This should be a must-read for any bright-eyed Gen X or Y (especially couples!) thinking of living and working in a non-Western environment.

You can read the whole review and check out other travel literature reviews by Lonely Planet here.

PS: Yes this is spooky picture of Steven, but it’s the only one we have with our guidebooks.