I Really Should Have Stayed Home: Worst Journeys from Harare to Eternity (Travel Literature Series) [Paperback]

Roger Rapoport (Editor), Bob Drews (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Travel Literature Series | Publication Date: June 2001

From the artist attacked by the entire waitstaff of a Chinese restaurant in New York after he dared criticize the lo mein, to a splendid anteater served for Thanksgiving dinner, this collection of travel disasters is guaranteed to make you rethink those vacation plans. Before you pack your bags consider some of the many ways that the trip of a lifetime can bring you all the joy of a life sentence. In this outrageously funny anthology of vacation horror stories you'll spend one too many nights in Tunisia and flee nightmarish holidays that stretch from Haare to Eternity. This book is guaranteed to make you unfasten your seatbelt for the belly laugh of the travel season as you are trying to figure out why your wallet disappeared. The hilarious sequel to the national bestseller I Should Have Stayed Home.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This collection of travel disasters, from a press that seems to specialize in such matters while also publishing the "Getaway" guides, contains 44 short tales of woe. Each one features a traveler who winds up being robbed, stranded, sick, lost, or without a passport among other vacation nightmares while traveling anywhere from New York City to Romania's "Orient Distress." The stories are humorous, even if for the authors they were anything but at the time. The last story is a happy one, perhaps in an attempt to relieve the unrelenting disasters. Overall, the writing in this anthology is uneven, but this sequel to I Should Have Stayed Home is nevertheless an entertaining read. For all public libraries. George M. Jenks, Bucknell Univ., Lewisburg, PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The punny subtitle tells us pretty much all we need to know about the tone of this collection of vacation horror stories. This is a lighthearted, anecdotal book featuring stories full of oddball characters, bizarre incidents, and lots of weirdness. Here are insects that smuggle themselves into countries by hiding in vacationers' clothes; unfathomable European traffic patterns; a trip to Africa that somehow was routed through Germany; an April snowstorm in Wyoming; and other unexpected delights. A sequel to 1994's I Should Have Stayed Home, this volume does not feature as many wellknown contributors as its predecessor, and without the likes of Paul Theroux or Barbara Kingsolver, the writing loses a little in style and wit; still, the content remains fascinating in that special way that disasters are always fascinating. A solid addition to travel literature. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: RDR Books; 1st edition (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571430814
• ISBN-13: 978-1571430816
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,355,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty dull, May 20, 2002

By 

ensiform (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Really Should Have Stayed Home: Worst Journeys from Harare to Eternity (Travel Literature Series) (Paperback)

This book is a third sequel to a book of established writers' travel horror stories. Here, amateur writers share their travel woes. It is, clearly, an attempt to milk a cash cow. While the writing is adequate (certainly not great), it's the content of the stories that really makes this a useless anthology. They're the quality of story you might tell your friends at dinner, but are in no way deserving of publication. Examples include: I was on a plane that was delayed; I couldn't find my car after the Super Bowl; we rented a boat and wrecked it; the service at this restaurant in England was very slow; we went to a hotel and damned if it wasn't a fairly shabby hotel; we ate some food and got sick. There are a few stories as interesting as, say, getting hurt and experiencing Vietnam's standard of hospital care. But mostly this is very dull, and pretty close to worthless.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better still, don't even get out of bed, March 26, 2002

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: I Really Should Have Stayed Home: Worst Journeys from Harare to Eternity (Travel Literature Series) (Paperback)

The principal attraction of I REALLY SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME is that its collected tales of road woe happen in non-exotic places to Ordinary Joes. I've been entertained in the past by compilations of such stories, some of which might perhaps stretch the credulity of those whose idea of a journey is flying to Phoenix to visit the mother-in-law or, at best, spending a couple of weeks on a package cruise of the Med. You know the kind of stories I mean: road warrior loses laptop to headhunters in the Amazon outback, spelunker falls into pit of bat guano in a remote Siberian cave. I mean, whom do you know does this stuff?

In this book, whether it's being seated on an international flight in front of someone secretly carrying an eye-wateringly stinky package - durian, in this case - or stupidly parking the car on the tram tracks in Brussels and bringing city traffic to a complete halt, I can relate without too much a stretch of the imagination. Then there's the story by the man whose experiences in a provincial Vietnamese hospital having sea urchin spines removed from his foot remind one of medieval torture. Or the one about having to chaperone "Ugly Californian" relatives through the backwaters of Central Europe. The first chapter relating a couple's encounters with various creepy-crawlers, including a scorpion found in a hanging shirt, during a trip to Costa Rica is particularly relevant to me because my wife wants to visit the country. (Oh, sweetie, come and read this!)

I won't pretend that all of these 43 stories are terrific. The monodrone - not a proper word, but it ought to be - by the college professor congratulating himself on having resisted the persistent sexual advances of a female student enrolled at the American University of Bulgaria was a piece of self-serving claptrap. And the one by the adventurer who decides to dribble a soccer ball across 15 miles of Colorado wilderness was simply contrived and silly. And a few more were just so-so. However, after finishing each chapter, I looked forward to the next with expectant curiosity and was rarely disappointed...

4.0 out of 5 stars Great read, August 2, 2009

By 

César Chávez "Tax the Rich... free the poor." (Amsterdam) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Really Should Have Stayed Home: Worst Journeys from Harare to Eternity (Travel Literature Series) (Paperback)

I found almost all of the short stories entertaining and well written. Each story is only a few pages long, so the occasional clunker (like the family that took a short canyon hike without water) does not seriously impair the flow of the book.