Any Raimond Joos fans? I really like his books. No stages, but lots of information. English editions for the CF are now available in print form.
I used Joos'
Camino Frances book in late 2018. A mixed review:
Joos has a light touch and I - usually - liked his personal interjections where most writers would have taken a more detached voice. For example, his review of an albergue based on second hand reports when the owner refused him entry ("again I was comprehensively screamed at"). It did not come across as complaining and there was something humorous in the "comprehensively." Joos came across as just another grappling pilgrim even as it reminded the reader that authors do a tremendous amount of unseen work in writing books like this one.
Joos puts an economical amount into a small space and the book is light and compact. Yet at times more would have been helpful. For example he did not review any place where the price for bed plus breakfast came to more than 15 Euros, intended to help those on the tightest budget but incomplete for others.
Joos' stages are deliberately much shorter than those of other authors and much shorter than anyone would ever walk so as to prevent pilgrims bunching up at the same stage-end every night. This was an excellent idea but the written passages and especially the maps became so segmented that it was hard for me to piece these bits together to make the personalized day plan Joos intended me to make. It would be easier to look at a big map and mentally break it down than to mentally combine three mini maps spread over 10 pages of constant flipping. A worthy experiment, but it did not work.
The single biggest thing about Joos' book - I do not know if this goes to the author, translator or editor - is that while the words are all correct English words they just don't seem to have been assembled right. The words are English but the word order - or thought order - appears to still be German. If this is indeed the case, then it made for an incomplete translation. This does not quite convey what I mean but I don't know how else to put it.
One issue, and this is common to all Camino guide authors, is that when it comes to route directions they will say it instead of show it. If a picture is worth a thousand words surely a map is worth the same. Please: fewer words, more maps - or even photographs of junctions where the correct turn is simply not clear no matter how it is described.
Finally, the latest issue for sale at Pamplona, where I bought it, and where choice was limited, was 2015 and it was surprising how much was already out of date. This part was my own fault for thinking I could wing the Camino based on waymarks and following the crowd, a fallacy I learned the hard way fast.
In the end, this was a likeable, original, economical work but not always easy to follow or fathom, at least not in this translation.
I look back nostalgically to the pre-2015 editions, where both the the books and the the maps were noticably larger and more useful.... (For that matter, I look back nostalgically to the day when I was noticably larger and more useful, too!)
But the 2019 edition is 3.5% wider than the 2017 edition! I'll have to buy a new shirt with a bigger pocket! 
