Customer Reviews

101 Places Not to See Before You Die

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I picked this up (while in a friend's bathroom I have to admit) and was so absorbed and amused that a significant amount of time slipped by. It was only when I emerged and saw the questioning stares that I realized how odd it must have seemed for a guest to disappear into the loo and stay there for 20 minutes, occasionally laughing out loud.
If you want a tonic to cure you from the sort of travel writing intended to sell - if you need a gift for a traveler (or a homebody for that matter) - take a look at this.

What do "The Testicle Festival", "Your Boss' Bedroom", "The Wiener's Circle", and "Groper's Night on the Tokyo Subway" all have in common? They are chapters in Catherine Price's new book, 101 Places Not To See Before You Die.

Seven years ago Patricia Schultz gave us the ultimate travel "bucket list" with 1,000 Places To See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List. In the introduction to her "sequel", Price said that she decided to create an "antidote" to all of the "must-do" tomes that followed in the wake of Schultz' book, so she came up with "a list of places and experiences that you don't need to worry about missing out on."

Price didn't visit each of the 101 don't ever go there locations in her book; she "called on travel-loving friends, family members, and, in some cases, complete strangers to tell [her] about overhyped tourist sites, boring museums, stupid historical attractions, and circumstances that can make even worthwhile destinations miserable." Some chapters are actually a "Guest Entry" by another author: Michael Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma, contributed "The Worst Meal in Barcelona"; Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell, described the bureaucratic Purgatory she found herself in at "The Customs Office at the Buenos Aires Airport." And Brendan Buhler, staff reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, entices readers with "Fan Hours at the Las Vegas Porn Convention."

Most of us would deem a visit to "A Vomitorium", or being stuck on "The Top of Mount Washington in A Snowstorm", or landing on "Jupiter's Worst Moon" as a travel experience to be avoided. Bypassing "Hell" or an overnight stay in "Garbage City" seems like good advice. Skipping "An AA Meeting When You're Drunk" is a no-brainer. And what traveler would want to be trapped on "The Inside of a Spotted Hyena's Birth Canal"?

But some readers will will undoubtedly find that at least a few of Price's "anti-bucket list" choices rank among their most memorable travel venues. I'm sure that Euro Disney and the Winchester Mystery House have legions of fanatical fans. "Times Square on New Year's Eve" may not be Price's favorite place to celebrate the beginning of the new year, but are the throngs that gather to watch the famous ball begin its descent counting down to 12:01 a.m. mere fools? Devotees of Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, and the Blarney Stone may be so incensed that they will set "vanity bonfires" and send Price's book from ashes to ashes.

I enjoyed visiting Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, even though Price says that the "U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police named it the most dangerous national park in the United States" and that you have "to deal with the desert's 116-degree summer heat, venomous snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and of course, drug traffickers..." As as often can be said about travel, "your experience may differ from mine"; I had a good time there during March a few years back when the weather was fine and the nasty critters, bad bugs, and evil people were nowhere to be found.

101 Places Not To See Before You Die isn't really a guidebook for figuring out where not to go on your summer vacation. But it's a good "summer read" that will give you plenty of chuckles especially when you're stuck at the airport, or on the tarmac, two places you hope you not to find yourself even one more time before you die.

I found this book very engaging and fun to read. I'm especially enamored of the author's fascination with carpets (on subways/hot yoga rooms) and I personally experienced #92 (and wish I hadn't- still living with the consequences).

I think that this book makes the perfect gift, as it will always generate something to talk about! While reading, my husband would often laugh out loud (books don't usually generate that response from him) and I found myself reading sentences aloud to whomever was near me.

All in all, you can't go wrong with this one! (as long as you don't take it too personally, as I think one reviewer may have...

As a fan of the inimitable "Crap Towns" Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK, I was looking forward to Catherine Price's book which has some funny parts but can seem a little mean-spirited at times. The basic problem is that it can't decide whether it's a list of terrible places, bad experiences and events, or just "stuff I don't like", so it doesn't commit to bad-mouthing places and risking the wrath of the natives in the name of comedy, and some of the experiences are just not that interesting. It's like the author managed to write 35 or 40 entries and really need some filler.

While most of the entries are 2-3 pages and some have pictures, the weakest are less than a page - and in some cases just a sentence, like these:

- #12: "Your boss's bedroom: This does not count as corporate team building."
- #48: "An AA meeting when you're drunk: This is not one of the twelve steps."
- #86: "Your college campus four months after you graduate: Don't be that guy."

Some of the other entries make the author seem a little smug, simply because she doesn't like what millions of other people do for no apparent reason - what's really wrong with Euro Disney, Stonehenge or the Blarney Stone apart from the fact they're popular places to go? Whereas books like Crap Towns would savage places in a funny way, here the author seems sometimes snobbish and anti-popularist, which isn't that fun to read.

Similarly, the humor in this sort of book should come from ridiculing a place rather than the people that go there. Vegas Strip, Nevada (#86): "the Strip is also an example of Americans' willingness to accept reproductions of famous sights as adequate alternatives to the real thing." So are we hating Vegas for its excess or the "dumb Americans" that go there? I think the author's really stretching the truth to assume that many people visit the Strip as an alternative for a trip to a real pyramid or the Statue of Liberty, when they're probably there just to gamble.

The concept of the book is great but ultimately it doesn't deliver on the promise of the premise. At times it reads like a Bay Area native's diary of all the things she hates outside the coolness of the Mission District.

Author Catherine Price has put together an eclectic collection of places that she, and several guest contributors, recommend that we don't bother visiting.

You might be saying, "But the world is out there to be explored: good, bad, and ugly." And I admit we were somewhat skeptical of the book's intent at first.. .but then came the chuckles and that led to laughing right out loud. After all, how can one read a book that includes "The Testicle Festival" (held each year at the Rock Creek Lodge outside Missoula, Montana) or "The Amsterdam Sex Museum" and not laugh?

I disagree with many of Price's slam-dunks on places; for instance, she seems to have written off the whole state of Nevada -- a place where we recently completed one of the best road trips imaginable; or the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato, Mexico (so. . .it's not for the squeamish, but we thought it was interesting). Several items such as the smell of the (San Francisco Bay Area) BART rapid transit train carpet or 'an AAA meeting when you are drunk' seem almost to be 'fillers' and detracted from excellent tales such as the night spent at a Korean temple (that one had me laughing out loud).

However, she's included a good number of places -- such as The Gum Wall tucked away in an alley near Seattle's Pike Place Market -- that I'd never heard of before.

Each place gets no more than 2- 3 pages in the book making it a great over-all quick read. It might be the perfect gift for some travel-fanatic friend of yours who always is looking for some new off-beat destination; or for one who prefers the armchair to airline seats.

This is the book for the curious-minded, whether you have traveled far and wide, or never leave your bed. Each 1-4 page chapter is hysterical in its own way, and reminded me that we live in a big, weird world. Excellent prose, canny insights, and just damn entertaining. I had a hard time finishing the book - my friends and family members would ask to take a look, read a page or two and then refuse to give it back until they finished. Seriously. The perfect summer book, travel book, gift book.

Catherine Price's sarcastic take on the '1001 things to do before you die' genre is pure fluff but it is a fun read and Price occasionally strikes gold with some genuine LOL moments that makes me wonder why she couldn't maintain that quality of writing for the majority of the 101 entries. The lack of pictures and inconsistency in writing screams 'rush job' all the way through but at the end of it all i really did enjoy these bite sized morsels.

The first time I looked at this book, I thought, "What's the point?", because if there's a place NOT worthy of going to in the world, I'll realize it before I book the trip, so I didn't really need this book. No one does.

But that's not that point of "101 Places Not To See Before You Die" at all. The author pokes fun at books about places that you should go and see--she makes a point in her introduction how unrealistic it is to go to all those places, read all the books recommended before you die, and so forth. Then she pokes fun at several places, scattered throughout the world (and some destinations without a specific location), and why you shouldn't bother going there. It's not really a book for those who love to travel; rather, it's a book on those who love to laugh. The prose is so well-written and hilarious, and the trivia you will learn from this book would make interesting conversation starters. By the way, if you're not a fan of disgusting or crude humor, many parts of this book won't appeal to you.

I do think a few of the articles were less interesting than others, and more photographs would have made this book more exciting. However, it's still an excellent book YOU SHOULD read before you die, as long as you're into this type of humor.

This is a hilarious travel book of places not worthwhile to go to for a number of reasons. Great for reading aloud!

Continuing in the vein of offbeat books I've been reading of late, I picked up an interesting and amusing read at the library this week... 101 Places Not to See Before You Die by Catherine Price. Most travel books cover the places you *should* see before you depart the bounds of earth. Price saves us all time and agony by telling us what we can bypass. :) If taken with the requisite dose of humor, this book is pretty funny. Of course, you may not think so if you live in Nevada...

Price decided to write the anti-travel book as a way to relieve pressure on herself. Every time she went into a book store, she was seeing lists of things she had to do *before* she died... 101 places to see... 1001 beers to drink... 100 movies to see. With that kind of pressure, who can relax and just enjoy things? With this book, she could help people ignore the places that just aren't worth the time and effort so they could focus on all the other things that are apparently required before death. Some of her choices are meant to be tourist destinations, such as the Colorado Testicle Festival or an overnight stay in a Korean Buddhist temple. Others are definitely *not* places you'd choose to visit or experience, such as rush hour on a Samoan bus or forensic anthropology facilities, also known as "body farms," where dead bodies are left to decompose in various situations to aid crime research. She even picks on some of the biggies, such as Euro Disney and Las Vegas. Actually, she includes the entire state of Nevada, as some of her friends focused on "the heat, the emptiness, the atrocity that is Lake Las Vegas, the nuclear waste, the alien sightings, and the fact that Criss Angel calls it home." Yes, you *do* have to have a sense of humor to read this, especially if you live in one of the places she chooses.

If you take this for what it is, it's a fun read. Obviously some of the choices are meant to be funny, as you can't go visit ancient Rome on the night of July 18th, 64 A.D. when a fire destroyed much of the city. But you learn something along the way, and you get a few laughs in the bargain. I certainly enjoyed 101 Places Not to See Before You Die, and my desire to visit Garbage City on the outskirts of Cairo has finally been put to rest...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed