The Little Black Book of San Francisco (Travel Guide) (Little Black Books)
Travel Roundup: Best Travel Series of the Year, 2008. Hooper, Brad (author). FEATURE. First published September 15, 2008 (Booklist). We select the Little Black Travel Books as our travel guide series of the year. The main reasons for designating these guides as best of the year are their portability and user friendliness. (The spiral binding allows the reader to keep the book open to a certain page.) Individual volumes are small enough to fit into a pocket, but in terms of helpfulness, they are twice their physical dimensions. The other reason these guides are so worthy of praise is the fact that each volume has a neat, tidy, and nicely detailed foldout map to the particular area under discussion. The chapters in each volume correspond to the geographical areas into which the authors divide the city for the tourist. Each chapter gives basics on places to see, available art, and entertainment venues, places to eat and drink, where to shop, and where to stay. You can study a range of guides before your actual trip, but this is definitely a commendable candidate for carrying with you on site. Little Black Travel Books (Peter Pauper Press). --Booklist (American Library Association)When I buy a guidebook, I usually look for the Frommer's $ a Day budget guides -- Washington D.C. from $80 a Day, Paris from $95 a Day, etc.  Why? Well, mostly because I'm a creature of habit. I started buying the Frommer's and Let's Go guides years ago because they focus on budget travel. Let's Go is great for backpackers and those on a really tight budget. Frommer's is a bit more mature but still budget-minded (think hotels rather than hostels), and I like their ''Suggested Itineraries'' section and their maps (Frommer's maps are among the best).  But now that there are so many other guidebooks to choose from, I buy Frommer's mostly because I can be in and out of the store in minutes rather than hours and I know I'll come home with a reliable guide.  Then, just this past month, everything changed... I discovered something new... You see, when I went to the bookstore to pick up guidebooks for my upcoming honeymoon, I got an idea... Since we're going around the world with stops in Milan, Lake Como, Dubai, Shanghai, and Tokyo, and I needed to buy a guidebook for each destination. Why not, I thought, buy five different guidebooks (from five different publishers) and compare them to find my favorite. So that's what I did. I bought one brand for each stop and then, on my way out, I saw a little Paris guide I'd never seen (or heard of) before. So I picked that up too. (I go to Paris at least once a year so I can never have enough Paris guidebooks.) Here's what I found... and it surprised me:  My favorite book of all -- for both pre-trip planning and on-the-ground support -- is The Little Black Book of Paris.  The other guides I bought are all divided into sections this way: Where to Stay, Where to Eat, What to Do. But The Little Black Book of Paris is divided by area. And each area has its own fold-out map (which, to be honest, blows the Frommer's maps out of the water). While the guide doesn't have an entire history or culture section like most of the others do -- Lonely Planet, TimeOut, Fodor's, etc -- it's well written and there's an overview of each area at the beginning of each section. I liked the guide so much I went back to the bookstore to buy more. Unfortunately, they don't have guides for my other destinations as they're a fairly new series. They do, however, have one for Washington D.C., where I live, so I bought that. After reading both guides -- Paris and D.C. -- cover to cover, I got so excited about these guidebooks I called the publisher to see what other books they have in the works. Turns out, Paris, D.C., New York, and Rome are the only guides on shelves to date. But San Francisco and London are due out later this year (July and September respectively). And they hope to publish four a year from now on, with Boston and Disney World on their 2008 list. These books are a real find, and I'm glad I stumbled on them. I encourage you to check them out. --Lori Appling - The Travel Writer's Life