Flying proofreading or editing, or both
The combination of countries was almost ideal for the purpose of the trip I was about to embark upon. It included Iceland and Lithuania. I grew up in Lithuania, and often visit Iceland, but the first had been changing rapidly, so it is good to keep checking the facts, and there's always something new one can find in a travel guide, even about a country one knows well. It is also a good way to assess the quality of information in the book, checking against the familiar. In that respect, this guide did not inspire trust: quite many misspellings in the Lithuanian part, a wrong URL here, a wrong word there (Zemuoges for "strawberry" - should have been "braskes" as "Zemuoges" are for wild strawberries). It lists the individuals who helped out with fact checking (and, it seems, stories, some of them dubiuos), so I would not be happy if I were one of the ones in the acknowledements for Lithuania.
Still an OK guide, hence three stars.
2007-09-04
