The Travel Book - Lonely Planet

The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World by Lonely Planet Publications
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘The world is a breathtakingly big place, and in this big book we have undertaken the big task of detailing as much of it as we can - every single country, many of the larger dependencies and other, smaller destinations. With the traveler's experience at its heart, this book shows a slice of life in every corner of the globe, and all points in between, engaging the reader's senses in an adventure which conjures up the sights, smells, tastes, sounds and feel of our amazing world.’ 

I absolutely love this book and cannot rate it high enough! I am an avid traveller and am always excited to get my hands on a new travel book. This is far by my favourite of any travel books I have read, what makes it even better is how the book has been presented. It has beautiful photographs of over 200 countries in the world. If you didn’t want to visit anywhere before you got your hands on this, you certainly will once you have read it!

I like this book as it runs through countries alphabetically and not by grouping them together, I find that this makes it smoother to read and if you do choose to read this as a fiction book then you get a surprise on the turning of every page.

This book allows you to get a ‘taster’ for the country on the page identifying facts and stats as well as having photographs that draw you in. I have come across countries in this book that I had never even thought about visiting, but I found it so inspiring they have become a part of my ‘countries to visit’ list. The book also has sections on the countries for you to get a more in depth opinion on it. Called ‘under the skin’ this allows you to read about what you may hear there, watch, drink, eat and ‘in a word’. There is also a section on when to visit the country – always useful when you a planning a visit!

I always keep this book out on the coffee table when I have guests and so far I have not come across any who have been able to resist a peek at it. Once they have done, they fall in love with the book and rave to me about it afterwards.

As lonely planet go, I am not a big fan of their individual country guides/books, however I absolutely love their big books which capture the moment in the photograph and make you wish you were there.

I would urge everyone to purchase this book as once you have you would not regret it, mine is currently sitting on my coffee table stuffed with post it notes on pages I wish to now visit.