Not all travel guides are created equal

I noticed this while perusing my Fodor's guide to Morocco the other day.  I purchased several travel books as part of my much-heralded, much-regretted final packing moments before leaving the Twin Cities for lovely Sweden.

Side-by-side comparisons do not demonstrate the vast difference between Fodor's and Lonely Planet, even online.  But I did not even do much of that.  My harried journey from not at all packed at 10 AM Thursday and departed for the airport at 10 AM Friday included trips to the T Mobile store for a phone case, Midwest for another compression bag, and the back to back bookstores of Highland Park: Half Price Books and Barnes and Noble.  My approach was to buy as many books as possible for the places I am visiting while spending the least amount of money possible.  This was tricky because I planned to visit more than twenty countries in several areas of the world, I was in a mad hurry, and because books are expensive.  So I started in the Half Price travel section: do I buy a book on all of SE Asia? what about Eastern Europe, which includes Turkey and Czeck Rep, but also a ton of countries I'm not visiting? the book on Thailand is HUGE, do I get that one? nothing on North Africa at all - I assume there is a North Africa book at B&N.  I buy the Let's Go Eastern Europe and a Lonely Planet on Turkey and head to B&N.  Nothing on all of North Africa, but they do have an LP on Egypt, which I buy, and head back to Half Price thinking they had one on Morocco.  They did not.  I buy a 4 dollar 'Dr Sax' and head back to B&N - it has gotten dark.  I go in this time through the Starbucks so the security guy at the main door doesn't follow me around again, I grab the Fodor's guide to Morocco, and head home to continue packing.

So what is so bad about the Fodor's guide?  They have maps, city descriptions, nice little histories, everything seems to line up.  The first sign that something was amiss was the 'Where to Stay' section for the city of Fez.  Fez is a pretty big place - quite touristy, and the listings of hotels (and only hotels) seemed to be missing budget locations.  The 'cheap' place to stay was 50$ (the hostel I eventually booked was 25$).  The second red flag was the descriptions of the places themselves.  Each has a pros and cons list - pretty standard stuff mostly - courteous staff, cleanliness, etc.  But the decor is noted on the cons list of several places, as well as 'small pool.'

Much like the B&N bookstore itself, it is now clear to me that Fodor's is geared more to families or suitcasers, rather than solitary backpackers like myself who would be excited about sleeping on the roof of a Moroccan hostel, as is often done there in the summer (thank you lonelyplanet online forum).

It turns out the best source of information (unverified thus far, I might be duped) is emailing tour companies and hostels, which are, turns out, staffed by friendly, travel-savvy folks (surprise!).  However, the books are quite useful for references and maps!  Lots of maps!  Which are great!  That aside, there are out there in blog-land many friendly, travel-savvy folks - if any of you have any secret hide-aways you love, or a place you've always wanted to see and could stand my getting there first, let me know!