Lightweight yet overwritten. ( )

Atlas of Improbable Places is a fun read (this is a reissue) but fell a little short of my expectations. I didn't mark it down very far because if I remove my personal disappointment I enjoyed it quite a bit.

First, my expectations. I expected more photographs and/or drawings/maps. I was thinking more along the lines of a coffee table or end table book, which usually means visually attractive as well as informative. This fell far short of what I would call visually appealing, though for a book that isn't supposed to be aesthetically pleasing it functions just fine.

The short chapters about each place were all interesting and left me wanting more information. Even an additional page for each would have been helpful. Between a small black and white photo each and a relatively short text, I felt let down more often than satisfied. I expect to want to do a little more digging on my own when I read a book like this, but I don't expect to have to do that digging for each and every entry, just for the ones that really piqued my curiosity.

On the flip side, since this has very few images and very short chapters it is actually a book one can easily read through rather than dip into periodically. Once I approached it as a more shallow overview rather than something that would make me feel I really knew these places, it became a decent read. I just didn't actually anticipate this kind of book. The places I had been I felt were given too short of an introduction which makes me wonder what wasn't brought up in the other entries.

I would still recommend this to readers who want to know about some of the more "improbable" or unusual places in the world, especially readers who want to simply have a list of places that they can then research on their own.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

In a time when exploring the world is something to look forward to but due to pandemic restrictions not easily doable, travel books are a great way to discover new places and stir up anticipation for the time after. Travis Elborough has found places which are not on the average agenda for a trip. In the subtitle, he calls them “the world’s most unusual corners” and I couldn’t agree more with that.

He classifies his finding into six groups: dream creations, deserted destinations, architectural oddities, floating worlds, otherworldly places, and subterranean realms. In each, he presents several destinations which are distributed all over the world with a majority in the USA and Europe. Each spot is accompanied by a text of two to four pages explaining what makes the place outstanding.

The author offers a great variety, from formerly closed soviet cities and other deserted military places over utopian places like Christania and villages abandoned after wars or other incidents to modern creations like the artificial island “The Palm” and underground ways which were never meant to be discovered.

It is a great coffee table book or gift to somebody who likes to travel and to learn about never heard of places. The information has the perfect lengths to take up the book now and again and just read and learn a bit about this planet’s wondrous locations. ( )

Quite a few interesting places, but the presentation isn't very good. Black and white pictures and maps that are hard to read. Could have been done much better. ( )

In which the author discusses 51 weird and intriguing places: there are just a couple of (well written) pages on each, and I had only heard of a few, so definitely of interest.
I have a few reservations, mainly about the layout. Each place features a FULL PAGE colour map- and since few are going to visit most of these sites (some cant BE visited) it seemed a poor use of paper. The photos are all b/w - it would have been vastly better to omit the maps (or just put one big world map with ALL on it) and then do a LOT more photos in colour! (Think Dorling Kindersley!) I wanted to see images of some of the places mentioned and was googling as I read, but one, often small, lacklustre grey image does the narrative no favours!
I also think 2 pages is about the minimum you can get away with.The author only manages ONE (no - half!) on some sites.. though the endless full page map still appears! It all felt a bit of an afterthought- was he trying to quickly bulk it out?
Anyway, accounts of all kinds of weird locations- from reclaimed Dutch land to abandoned industrial cities. Hippy communes, jails and bunkers, a USA version of Stonehenge. Also some natural sites: Turkmenistan's fiery Darvaza crater (the bw photo was most unhelpful- the bits I presume were glowing red could have been snow!); the Venezuelan mountain that inspired the Lost World...
Quite an interesting browse but wouldn't buy a copy (this from library.) ( )