Do You like book Narrow Dog To Carcassonne (2006)?
A lovely, meandering read through the canals of England and France. This book is definitely not for everyone, though. The writing is very stream-of-conscious-y and often lacks specific details, and the dialogue is not differentiated from the rest of the text (no quotation marks or line breaks between speakers). So it took me about 20 or 30 pages to get into the rhythm of the book and get over my usual textual expectations, but once I did I liked it. The descriptions are quite pretty. (And I love that the text is all printed in blue! There ought to be more non-black printings, I feel.)
—Laura Bang
While the thesis for this book was an English narrowboat (canal boat) taken down England, across the channel, into Belgium, and then to the south of France, the actual amount of material devoted to boating or canal details could have been summed up in less than 15 pages. This was a rambling prattle, that appeared to have mostly a satirical negative overtone, regarding fleeting glimpses of people and restaurants along the route.The owners (writers) were older, the trip was apparently expensive, and there were historical detail fill-ins regarding WWII actions in various sites.There were no maps and no summarized table of distances, times, and costs. No worthwhile details were given at all. For instance, I think the boat was required to be escorted across the English channel, and I think that there is a relatively high cost for the escort service due to licensing, but this wasn't even mentioned.How locks actually work, how hard is it to handle and steer a narrowboat? - You won't find any detail here.300 wasted pages trying to colorize a not very interesting trip - one in which the authors didn't seem to enjoy.To be fair, the English have a different viewpoint than regular people, and this book was intended to be halfway about their dog, a whippet, which was taken on the journey - I had no interest in the dog after about the first 2 pages. There is maybe 1 worthwhile mention of canal travel detail per chapter, so the book can be a fast scan looking for these mentions. Same for the dog relevance portions. You'll never get your life back if you waste the full time trying to read and treasure this.
—Joe White
So, I am only part way into this book, but I just have to share that I am listening to it on audio, and the reader is hysterical. I have no idea what is going on most of the time (partly because I am a very inattentive listener), but I am thoroughly entertained most of the time!Update: So, now that I've finished...This was a really great book, even if it did take me two CDs of the audio and a map to figure out what was going on. Sometimes, it is much wiser to read the jacket of the book first. Also, while a good story, I am certainly not going to run out and buy a narrow boat and try to take a vacation across the canals of Europe. While I like adventure, I much prefer this sort of adventure when experienced vicariously, listening to an audio book in my car :)In any case, what a great TRUE story about Terry Darlington, his wife Monica, and his dog Jim (or Gin, depending on which pub you're in), and their adventures in their narrow boat traveling across England and France. The tale is weaves in and out of their travels, meandering through towns and villages, intersecting with the lives of other travelers and non-travelers, facing uncertain doom every so often along the way. My favorite part of the book: Jim, the whippet, with super-canine abilities to read minds and perceive the unperceiveable.
—Crystal
