The Bucket List: 1000 Adventures Big & Small

 After reading one of the other books that was made by the same grouping and in a similar fashion you would think I would learn my lesson about the content. Unfortunately I didn't and what makes it even worse is the fact that it couldn't even keep the same rating as the first but went down. If it was in my nature this book would have been a DNF.

The book's main focal is suppose to be about giving the reader with 1000 adventures, which they do. But unfortunately that is the only thing they do and even then they mess it up so completely. First of all in the Introduction they mention that not every adventure has to be a travel adventure and yet the book is focused 98.5% on traveling. As a result there is very little to add to your bucketlist adventure-wise that isn't related to travel.

And although there is a color key to explain the types of adventures it really doesn't work since only the number at the front of the entry is colored. As a result the colored part is barely seen to the reader and unless you remember or keep flipping back to the key it is a waste. What I would have done for the book is to have made a general entry such as learning to juggle, learning to play a certain instrument, etc. and then including a suggested location at the end of the basics if there was a certain region that was important to that activity.

Otherwise the writing was stilted and dry so much that the reading from cover-to-cover itself was quite boring. At the same time there seemed to a permanent error where peek was misspelled as peak throughout the book while the knowledge of the editing team needs a refresher course. First of all if you are going to mention mountain gorillas and Sigourney Weaver then why not mention the actual woman Dian Fossey that she was based upon. We don't need a suggestion of Attenborough combined with a film.

Another thing is how is it the most well-known prison in history is the unnamed prison where Nelson Mandela was held? If it was so famous then include the name in the entry. Instead I would think, especially from so many authors who seemed to be UK-based in their About Author paragraphs, that they would have suggested the Tower of London or the Bastille. Both are so much older than that single prison, more well-known to so many and hold a much longer hold on the past. Even Alcatraz may hold a much better grasp on that accolade for a well-known prison in history.

The book also has a lot of colored pictures and a good chunk are whole page pictures in which there is no writing. Within these pictures there is no subject of a traveler shown or if there is occasionally the face is covered. The captions at the bottom of them are basically just ripped off the suggested adventure idea with no extra details given to the reader.

All in all if you can afford to travel or throw away money than this may be a better guidebook for you to skim to get some general suggestions, a bit more information like the best times to do some things in foreign locations or even occasionally the timeframe it may take to travel a certain route. Just be sure, though, not all travel suggestions provide a timeframe on how long some of these adventures may take.