Reviewed By Charles Remington for Readers' Favorite

Jonathan Tindale spent a while living in New Zealand, housed in a dilapidated caravan located in the remote South Island countryside that New Zealanders call the wop-wops. Some considerable time later, long after his return to his native UK, he received a scrappy manuscript which, strangely, had been sent by that very same caravan. It consisted of diary entries, which he had written during his stay, linked together with observations, interpretations and information added by the caravan - additions which it had based on the many years spent travelling the New Zealand road system and its observation of the various occupants it had carried. Jonathan has decided to publish the manuscript under the title Squashed Possums, Off the Beaten Track in New Zealand, a book which provides much information about this unique southern hemisphere nation and the nature of its indigenous caravans. There is historical detail, much valuable information on the people, the flora and unusual fauna of the islands, together with some vivid descriptions of the stunning countryside, and harrowing accounts of caravan living during the deep midwinter southerly storms.

Part travelogue, part memoir - I enjoyed this book immensely. The unusual juxtaposition of viewpoints, with the author’s diary entries coupled to observations from the caravan in which he lived, gives the narrative an easy pace. A great deal of information is imparted and absorbed in a light, digestible way. One could easily see the technique used in Squashed Possums applied to other situations with boats, cottages, homes or even castles speaking about their histories and commenting on the lives and antics of their occupants. Jonathan Tindale has produced an excellent work which I would highly recommend.

Reviewed By Divine Zape for Readers' Favorite

Walking to Woot by Jackie Chase is a highly entertaining and informative non-fiction narrative, an unusual tale of how travelling dangerous paths together can create a powerful bond between mother and daughter. When the author and her daughter decide to travel to the unfamiliar landscapes of the jungles of New Guinea, it seems like just another adventure. Little did they know that they’d be travelling into a completely new world and age, and that they’d meet weird people and face untold challenges. Their contact with nature, the encounter with a different culture, and the dangers they overcome open their eyes to new realities and awaken a new form of life they haven’t known until then. It will be interesting to see how the experience of a four-week trip into the uncharted parts of New Guinea helps mother and daughter to deepen their love for each other and to discover their hidden strengths and gifts.

Jackie Chase combines great writing with photography to take readers away from their familiar terrain and into a world that is both primitive and virgin. The images speak powerfully of the mode of life of people inhabiting places they visited, painting the kind of world readers who have watched The Gods Must Be Crazy will be infinitely attracted to. It is most interesting to see how the protagonists of this beautiful and hilarious tale fit into the entire scenario. Readers will watch them handle physical challenges, cultivate courage, build self-confidence, reach out to make friends, and learn to accept that people can be different and that there is some beauty in that difference. You’ll laugh and learn as you read Walking to Woot, a most hilariously engaging book. I have never read anything like it before.

Reviewed By Tracy A. Fischer for Readers' Favorite

In a fun, well-written and informative new book penned by author Marianne C. Bohr, Gap Year Girl: A Baby Boomer Adventure Across 21 Countries recounts the story of the author and her husband as they said goodbye to their jobs and all of their worldly possessions in order to return to places they had visited on their travels in their youth. Following a dream held closely by many of the baby boomer generation, the couple traverses 21 continents during their journey, lives on a budget, and sees and does more than many do in several lifetimes. Readers will smile, laugh, and be touched at the author's recounting of their experiences, and if they didn't have wanderlust before, they certainly will now!

I so enjoyed Gap Year Girl: A Baby Boomer Adventure Across 21 Countries. Author Marianne C. Bohr has done a great job at finding the perfect balance between telling the story of their travels, providing information about each place they visited, and just being plain entertaining. Any reader with an interest in travel, especially those of the baby boomer generation, would thoroughly enjoy this book. I highly recommend Gap Year Girl: A Baby Boomer Adventure Across 21 Countries to any such reader. I certainly hope that author Marianne C. Bohr will continue with her traveling adventures and will continue writing about them. For those of us who find ourselves a bit landlocked at this time, reading books such as hers just might provide us with a little bit of wind in our sails!

Reviewed By Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Kindness One sounds like a course heading for a local college. It's not, but perhaps it should be. Kindness One, a take-off name from Airforce One, the U.S. President's private jet, is a private mode of transportation with the power to spread an important message about, you guessed it, kindness. It's something many take for granted, or don't even consider at all. It's the simple act of doing something positive to help someone else, just for the sheer joy of being kind. Author Leon Logothetis had this brilliant idea after he noticed a homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles, right on Hollywood Boulevard, holding a sign that read: "Kindness is the best medicine." The homeless man was Leon's first inspiration, but he certainly wasn't his only one. He handed the man two twenty-dollar bills and then returned home to his girlfriend with the idea of riding a motorcycle around the world to spread a little bit of kindness. It sounds crazy, but when Leon gets an idea, he goes for it, and his idea went beyond crazy, when he announced that he was going to travel without any money in his pocket. In fact, he was going to depend on the kindness of strangers to buy fuel for his bike, feed him and provide him with shelter.

Leon's story - The Kindness Diaries: One Man's Quest to Ignite Goodwill and Transform Lives Around the World - takes us from his home, to a cattle ranch where he learned how to rope a cow, to the central core of Pittsburgh where he slept on the mean streets with some homeless people, then across the Atlantic on a cargo ship (working all the way), through Europe and Asia, where he met kindness and not-so-kind people, but always finding his way and learning from others. It sounds almost as unbelievable as it is crazy, but that's what was Leon's mission. He helped those he met along the way, those who shared kindness with him. And, he learned the true power of being kind.

Amazingly, Leon actually traveled through Bhutan, a country that has a philosophy well suited to his mission: Gross National Happiness, where "Happiness means simplicity." In the most simple life, one can find true happiness. When things became difficult, Leon would rely on the words of wisdom he had picked up along the way. A friend told him, "Don't quit before the miracle happens." Mother Teresa's words of wisdom to us all are, "It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving." Salman Rushdie writes, "To understand just one life, you must swallow the world." And, Shantaram says: "Freedom is a universe of possibility."

Leon's advice, something that he learned from others on his travels is: "Surround yourself with love." He also discovered that the journey would only be complete when he found his way home again. Leon has written a very inspirational true story, one that will warm the hearts of all who read it, and hopefully one that will help spread the positive power of kindness. He has a powerful message to share, one that we should all take seriously. Well done!

Reviewed By Gisela Dixon for Readers' Favorite

The Amazing Journey: Book One by Grady Hicks is nothing short of amazing. Grady Hicks sets out on a world voyage with his eldest son, Austin, and the experience is life-changing for both of them. The father-son duo sets out to explore the world, and thus bond with each other as well as “find” themselves in the process. This is really more of a quest than just your average travel tour. That is part of the reason why the mother and wife, Brianna, is kept out of the loop in the beginning regarding the exact itinerary. Their voyage takes them far and wide and literally ends on the “roof of the world”, a region comprising the Himalayas including Mt. Everest, Tibet, India, Nepal, and the Pamir Mountains among others. During this journey, Grady and Austin deal with people from all walks of life, interact with government officials in various regions, meet with mystics, and more. In fact, after reading this book, I felt that every parent should try to do something like this with their child.

Grady Hicks has written an outstanding travel book and the best part is this is only Book One. Towards the end of this book, Grady states that he has planned similar quests with his other son and his daughter as well, and I, for one, am eagerly looking forward to Book Second and Third in this wonderful series. Grady’s writing style is really simple and genuine that anybody can easily connect with. The actual journey itself is described in a way that brings vivid images to mind and paints a true picture of the places visited. I highly recommend this book to everyone, and especially to all parents out there.

Reviewed By Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite

In this fast-paced modern world, one of the biggest challenges to finding inner peace is to find a place where the hustle and bustle stops and real solitude is possible – sadly, we live in a culture where, all too often, silence exists only to be filled and to be alone is interpreted as being inherently lonely. Small wonder then that acclaimed Los Angeles writer and time-lapse photographer Tom Lowe jumped at the chance to be an Artist in Residence at the Mojave National Preserve. During his fifteen-night sojourn, Lowe captured the 22 breathtaking moonlit photographs featured in Mojave Moonlight. These superb color images are accompanied by a fascinating personal narrative of tales from the journey, and notes from the field, about the conditions under which the extraordinary time-lapse effects were achieved. Their appeal is universal, and the vastness of the landscape, rendered authentically, is mind-expanding.

From the dazzling Milky Way to stark, oddly plaintive Joshua trees and inexplicably animate rock formations, Lowe’s vistas evoke the unique solitude and infinite expanses of the Mojave Desert by moonlight. Stars streak and fall in mesmerizing patterns that seem to be the visual equivalent of whale song – ancient, mysterious, and humbling. The horizon glimmers with a kind of fey silvered enchantment; boulders and dunes gather to worship beneath heavens that seem to fold out upon themselves like some sort of divine three-dimensional pop-up book. The overall effect is pure magic. Mojave Moonlight by Tom Lowe is a rare and beautiful book that readers will return to many times.

Reviewed By Roy T. James for Readers' Favorite

Las Vegas - Insider’s Guide by Titus Nelson is a comprehensive guide to Las Vegas, especially its adult make up, containing much information in that direction. Interesting maps of the city and its vantage points, interesting sights in and around the city, reference lists, including '10 surest ways to get arrested in Las Vegas’, useful Smartphone apps like Vegas Mate, which can show the best route, walk time, cost of cabs etc., are included in this guide. It starts with Las Vegas at a glance, explains how to navigate in and around the city, and gives advice regarding all sorts of fun while staying away from trouble. This book has a chapter on how to get married in Las Vegas, followed by, naturally, ‘How to get a divorce’ in this state.

Las Vegas - Insider’s Guide by Titus Nelson is written with a ‘discerning visitor in search of entertainment’ in mind and there is no topic which is not discussed in this book. This book can also serve as a reference as it contains much data regarding entertainment, sports, legal advice, or other matters of general interest which could be useful to visitors. Quite extensive is the ready reference provided at the end of the book with listings of the statutes, rules and penalties one should acquaint oneself with regarding adult entertainment. A good collection of maps showing roads, signs, filling stations and other necessities for a traveler, controlled substances and other things of comparable nature which are best avoided fill the pages.

Reviewed By Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River is a non-fiction travel book written by Gayle Harper. Harper is a travel writer and photographer who's had a lifelong love of the Mississippi River. While she always had the inkling of a thought about a full-scale adventure on the river, it wasn't until she saw a factoid on the National Park Service's website that her thought bloomed to its full potential. The site said that a single drop of water falling at the headwaters of the Mississippi travels for 90 days to reach the Gulf of Mexico. Harper calculated that that drop would travel about 27 miles a day on its 3-month long journey; then she decided to call that drop 'Serendipity' and to travel along with it, and her project was born.

I settled into an easy chair with a cup of tea and Gayle Harper's non-fiction travelogue, Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River, and found myself falling in love with the headwaters of the Mississippi and the marvelous natural settings of Minnesota. I had to keep reminding myself that it gets very cold there in the wintertime, and then I continued reading on, and studying one stunningly beautiful picture after another as Harper and her raindrop continued their journey south. There were so many places to see and stories to hear; all quite new for someone who's only ever lived on a coast and barely seen the arch of St. Louis flash by on a road trip. Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River is an exceptionally good travel book that reads as smoothly as fiction and is filled with history, nature and the warmth and kindness of strangers soon to become friends. It's a splendid read, and it's most highly recommended.

Reviewed By Samantha Rivera for Readers' Favorite

If you've ever wanted to travel around the world but didn’t know how to do it, then How to Become an Escape Artist, a Traveler’s Handbook, is definitely for you. This book teaches you not only what to keep in mind when you travel, but how to completely immerse yourself in the world and culture that you are visiting. You don’t want to simply go to a country and see all the ‘tourist traps’ that they have lined up on easily accessible streets. What this book teaches you is how to locate the road less traveled and how to be welcomed down it with open arms.

There is more than one way to travel and Jackie Chase has definitely found the more interesting one. It can be fun to be an American visiting Europe for the first time, but you’ll remain just an American and you’ll remain just a visitor. On the other hand, immersing yourself in the culture of Cambodia is something entirely different and not just because it’s a different country than Europe. There’s so much to see and do and experience around the world and I can’t wait to try all of it. This book is an inspiration to me to try and really ‘go it alone’ and make my way through all the countries I possibly can - not as a tourist in the four-star hotels, but as a ‘local’ living in a hut or sleeping on the ground. There’s so much more to learn that way, after all.

Reviewed By Kristie Ingerto for Readers' Favorite

All Hands Working Together – Cruise for a Week: Meet 79 Cultures, written by Jackie Chase, provides the reader with a thorough 'behind the scenes look' at a cruise ship. This particular cruise ship has workers on it from 79 different countries; therefore there are 79 cultures melding together and 79 individuals working and joining together, creating a family. Each person is introduced, along with a description of their position on the cruise ship and a little bit about him or herself. There are photographs interspersed throughout as well, providing a visual to various things on the ship, for example, baking thousands of dinner rolls, the wall of weekly recipes and the children’s play area. Each person has a job to perform to make sure each guest is taken good care of so that each person feels special.

Jackie Chase really opens up the reader’s eyes to life on a cruise ship. Upon reading this book, the reader will understand the intricate workings of a smooth and enjoyable cruise. The reader will also be inspired by the accounts shared in this book as all of these individuals join together, despite cultural differences, and form a team which successfully perform their jobs and work together to result in an enjoyable experience for the vacationers on the ship. Personally, I find this book to be eye-opening as I know people who have gone on cruises, but I have not thought about all of the planning and so many little details that are a part of the cruise experience. It is inspiring to read the various accounts from the individuals on the ship as well. This is an excellent book that those who love traveling or long to travel would enjoy!