When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home [Mass Market Paperback]

Erma Bombeck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 5, 1992

The popular humorist offers tips and truisms on travel, discussing oddly named food, Asian bus drivers in Germany, plumbing around the world, and more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With her infallible mix of outspoken humor and compassion, the internationally bestselling author of I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise deflates the bloated claims of travel as pure pleasure. It's bad enough with the kids who order the costliest dish on the menu and eat only the pickle. With her husband, Bombeck finds risky adventures from primitive New Guinea to supposedly civilized countries. The couple endures carping companions on a tour bus in Rome: "They felt the tour was tilted in favor of Catholic churches." Other trials involve the vagaries of renting cars, tipping and, always, finding a working toilet, as problematic in Houston's vaunted Space Center as in the backward places of the world. After scoring direct hits on the funny bone, Bombeck moves readers with stories about elderly and handicapped people who enjoy traveling in their different ways. A blind young boy describing what he "saw" with his other senses while descending the Grand Canyon is one of many persons the author makes unforgettable. 750,000 first printing; $400,000 ad/promo; first serial to Woman's Day; first serial to Woman's Day; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Bombeck hits the bull's-eye with this wry meditation on the art of surviving one's long-dreamed-of and hard-earned exotic vacations. Huddled in a lumpy bed in Papua New Guinea, listening to a tribal war play itself out in the street outside her hotel room, Bombeck reflects on the privileges earned by a life of hard work, prudent financial management, and a taste for adventure. Over the years, not only have she and her husband (as well as, at the worst of times, her three reluctant adolescent kids) been blessed with the chance to drag 50-pound suitcases from airport terminal to taxi queue to hotel lobby to hotel room and back again (or else, when the luggage is lost in transit, to spend two weeks in Tahiti in three-piece suits), but they have splurged on bus tours that allotted 15 minutes to view the Book of Kells in Ireland and an hour and a half to tour a sweater factory; on a private car whose driver spoke English like an Italian Henry Kissinger with a lip full of Novocain; on a villa in which the staff spoke only Spanish and the guests were reduced to rubbing their tummies at the cook and saying, ``Yummy, yummy!''; and on a glamorous cruise through the fjords of Norway, where Bombeck and spouse ate 17 meals a day and outgrew their clothes, only to find half the crew camped out in the exercise room. Worldly wisdom gained by years of experience with Turkish bathrooms, Montezuma's revenge, and transporting native spears home on American airlines has impressed on Bombeck the basic commonality of all cultures and has inspired her to suggest that instead of stockpiling nuclear weapons we should aim our vacation slides at one another. Classic Bombeck, in which she does away with any notion of an empty-nest syndrome. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for August.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperTorch (December 5, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061099813
• ISBN-13: 978-0061099816
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,082,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Beloved for her wry yet warm look at family life, Erma Bombeck was America's favorite humorist at the time of her death in 1996. Ten of her 13 books, including Forever, Erma, appeared on the New York Times best-seller list. She claimed her first fiction writing was the weather forecast in the Dayton Herald. Her favorite food was pasta, and her hobby was dust.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A travel book matched only by the immortal Dave Barry's, August 16, 2000

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home (Mass Market Paperback)

Erma Bombeck has crafted a glorious travel book that explains just why you should keep your behind firmly planted indoors. Over the course of the book, she goes to Mass in a church where people go topless (and yes, I mean the women), goes to Europe with the weirdest bunch of people ever to go on a tour, tackles the hard rolls from hell, and buys the tiniest mobile home in history.

She dryly comments on every weird detail of travelling further than five miles, from languages to airplanes to foreign bathrooms to travel snobs to stuffing yourself with food. Oh, and guess the meaning of this if you haven't read the book: "Number One Jesus Man."

BTW if you enjoyed this book, scamper off and check out "Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need" and "If God Had Meant For Us To Travel". These guys are a bit wackier, but just as funny.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most humorous book I have ever read!, January 10, 2006

By 

Reviewer Mary "Reviewer Miss Mary" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: When You look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home (Audio Cassette)

This is the first book I've read by Irma Bombeck and I bought it because of the rave reviews from other readers. I was more than pleasantly surprised. I am recovering from a broken ankle and needing a "little cheering up". This book did the trick. I was laughing nonstop. I would highly recommend it!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've never read a Bombeck book I didn't like......., April 20, 2002

By 

Allaiyah (How you know I'm in Seattle? O_o) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home (Mass Market Paperback)

& this was the best. You can litterally place yourself in her shoes & experience comical things you could never have imagined happening to yourself. The way she narrates really grabs you into the book & won't let you go, & when your finished you need another of her books or you'll go into withdrawl syndrome. It was a horrible loss she died & took her comical genius that no one else has mastered with her.