i heart guidebooks

I have a serious book problem.  They seem to breed in the isolated corners of my house.  My kindle has helped the accumulation considerably, until Ireland.  I have visited at least 4 bookshops since arriving, and have purchased 6 titles: 3 guidebooks, and 3 fiction books.

The Fiction books: New Irish Short Stories Ed. Joseph O’Connor (I actually saw this one several times before caving), The Visitor by Maeve Brennan, and Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan.  I found all three in the Irish section of a little bookstore in Clifden this afternoon.  (As a side note, I took a free one-hour walking tour of the city and I was the only attendee, so Brennan, an older gentleman with a full, white beard, took me around the city and told me about its history.)

The three guidebooks I purchased while in Ireland.  I bought Irish Language and Culture in Clifden, and the others (Drive Around Ireland and Burren Archaeology by Hugh Carthy) in Ennis a few days ago.  Burren Archaeology was very enlightening as Jared and I stopped at a few places discussed in the book, and I read about them while we were there.  I am currently following one of the drives in Drive Around Ireland.

These are the books I brought with me from the US.  The Lonely Planet guide has been extremely useful – the best by far.  I haven’t used the others at all, though I do love the excellent pictures in the Eyewitness Travel guide.

These are the free regional guides that I picked up along the way at various tourist information offices.  These will not be coming home with me.  I’ll leave them in the last B&B where I stay for the next person to use.  Each one has a good map in the back, though I’m not interested in hitting any more of the tourist destinations listed within – I got that out of my system in the first week.