Best in Travel 2010 Lonely Planet, £9.99
This is Lonely Planet’s guide to what its writers, staff and contributors reckon are the best places to visit next year, the destinations that will be the hottest tickets for travellers with time and money to spare.
What is surprising, then, is that some of the most well-worn destinations pop up on the lists. The list of top 10 countries contains the unsurprising entries of Germany, Morocco, New Zealand, the US and Malaysia – fine countries to visit, certainly, but hardly the stuff of insider knowledge.
The entries in this section of the book are very brief, and it is difficult to imagine anyone booking a trip based on the treatment here – though the inclusion of the ecotourism hot spot of Suriname is a welcome exception.
Things pick up a shade for the top 10 regions: the pristine Fernando de Noronha volcanic archipelago, in Brazil, looks particularly tempting, Russia’s Lake Baikal is a worthy and fascinating inclusion, and maybe the charms of the British Lake District are often overlooked.
The top 10 cities contains a few surprises, perhaps most notably the well-publicised inclusion of Cork – if you were thinking of jumping on a plane to visit a city, would Cork really be in the same league as Kyoto, Istanbul or Vancouver?
From here on in, this book loses the run of itself in a list frenzy, but if you want to know Lonely Planet’s recommendations for the 10 best places to go for plastic surgery or medical treatment, or indeed its top 10 airports, then by all means invest.
However, there are plenty of other books on the market that will give you better ideas more comprehensively than this jittery effort.