Customer Reviews

The Chocolate Travel Guide: United States Edition 2010

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was really looking forward to this book, and now I wish I hadn't purchased it! Unfortunately, I had the wrong impression of what this book would be and imagined a book filled with descriptions of chocolate, chocolate shops, chocolate tours and festivals. Instead, I got a book filled with addresses. The forward explains that unless a shop got back to the research staff, the entry is limited to contact information. I thought this was really strange, because this meant that many famous chocolate companies were barely mentioned in this book! The shops which responded are given extended descriptions, and a few of them are interesting -- particularly the Hawaiian entries. However, mostly the highlighted shop information is simply made up of things like address, website, phone number, awards, three most popular chocolate items, and some brief biographical information about the chocolatiers. The chocolate festival information is limited to the month it is usually held and the website address!!! There are city based chocolate tours available in the U.S. and factory tours which are mostly ignored in this book. I was really disappointed by how little there was to read in this text when there are so many exciting chocolate travel opportunities.

The second reason I wish I hadn't purchased this book is because it is more of a rough draft than a finished product. It really needs proofreading! In the very first extended shop description alone there are three sentences which have problems like typos (using the word newlywed instead of newlyweds to describe a couple), words that are capitalized which shouldn't be, and disagreements in point of view within a sentence. The last is a problem throughout the limited text. One sentence will be a description of a shop or the chocolatiers, but the next will be from their point of view: for example, our chocolates are X. These sound like quotes from the company but there are no quotation marks or other forms of attribution to set them off. Then, of course, there's fun with spelling with comments like "take a peak" instead of "take a peek." It seems like most publishers nowadays are relying too much on spellcheckers, but the problems with this book go way beyond that, and for $20 I expect more.

This is a great detailed book! When you are traveling it is nice to know where some of the local shops are for souveniers or gifts. (who doesn't like chocolate!)
This gives the name of the store and the address and phone number along with the website so you can have this before you go!

Ms. Kostyk has captured a large breath of the chocolate domination in the US. Many of the short articles bring to light some of the unique and some of the similar offerings at many of the nooks and crannys of the US. It was interesting for me to see some of the uncommon chocolate combinations and how the various parts of the US tweek recipes and approaches to their creations. I think this would be a useful tool for a chocolate vacation tour in any part of the US. Well done, and we'll keep looking for more.

I like this book because I can use it as a reference to shop local when I am traveling and help support those businesses.