Rough Guide To The Music Of Vietnam, The [ECD] - Various Artists

Advantages: great selection, good variety
Disadvantages: somehow mistitled, mostly traditional stuff

...Rough Guide, best known for their budget travel guides, has been steadily expanding in other areas, and has been responsible for quite a few musical "guides" over the years. This 1998 album, marketed as "Rough Guide to the Music of Eastern Europe", does pretty much exactly what is says on the package: provides quite a wide ranging overview of folk and (occasionally) folk-inspired music of Eastern Europe. This is an album that pretty much started my liking for "world music" coming from my part of the world, and despite its age it remains a good compilation which really does showcase the variety of what's on offer quite well. One thing that this "Rough Guide" album needs is perhaps a better definition of what is considered Eastern Europe: this is a surprisingly woolly category (I always remember somebody commenting than Poland... Read review

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Advantages: Chatty, friendly style. Informative
Disadvantages: Not a technical 'manual'

...terms of disadvantages, if you want an all-singing, all-dancing 'technical manual' with photos and diagrams, this isn't for you. I'd recommend The Rough Guide to Pregnancy and Birth highly and if you're about to join the Kid Club you'd be well served in picking up a copy. NB - I have reviewed the 2nd Edition, 2006.... Read review

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Advantages: Useful suggestions as to what to do
Disadvantages: Beijing is being developed so fast that a lot of the book's information is out of date.

...Like all the other Rough Guide volumes, this book gives a very good, well-rounded guide to the city. Starting off with a "must-do" list, it can very quickly give you an idea of what you really have to experience. If you have a little longer in the city, a more in-depth reading of the book will give you a nice idea of what curiosities and little-known places lie in store. I was worried that once certain "out-of-the-way" places got in the book, they'd become much more mainstream and by the time I got there, the place itself would have completely changed from what was reviewed by the Rough Guide researchers. Fortunately, this was not the case. Either no-one takes their Rough Guides to Beijing, or simply the lack of any English people out there means that this simply doesn't happen. The one thing that notably does change quite fast... Read review

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