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

The trip of a lifetime, or a life sentence?

Disasters that can't wait to happen are guaranteed to make you unfasten your seatbelt for the belly laugh of the travel season. As you try to figure out why your wallet just disappeared, relax and be glad you weren't along for the ride with...

Marius Bosc as the entire waitstaff of a New York restaurant began attacking him after he tried to send back his lo mein.

Claudia Capos as she sat down to a splendid anteater served for a Tasmanian Thanksgiving.

Brooke Comer hitching a ride through Upper Egypt on top of a pickup bed full of unripe melons.

Matthew FIke when a coed in one of his English classes in Bulgaria announced "I need to be with you in your bed."

Nadine Payne when she was kicked off Romania's "Orient Distress" on a rail line in the middle of nowhere.

Cameron Burns on his honeymoon as his wife discovered a poisonous eight-inch long scorpion crawling down her blue cotton t-shirt. Zona Sage as she and a flight crew worked feverishly to track down a putrid smell that makes a jet's interior smell like a sewer.

Larry Parker as a stream of overnight freight trains rolled past the window of his Oregon bed and breakfast.

Carole Dickerson shipwrecked with her family on a dream vacation.

William Douglass as monkeys danced about his Kenya lodge room in his wife Jan's nightgown.

A welcome addition to the literature of the damned, this book rolls up the welcome mat as it makes you rethink those vacation plans. Yes, in this outragenously funny anthology of vacation horror stories you'll spend one too many nights in Tunisia and flee nightmarish holidays that stretch from Harare to Eternity.

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.

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
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