celebrating books & the literary lifestyle

Category: Literary Travel (Page 1 of 3)

MY FAVORITE TRAVEL BOOKS

I want to share my favorite travel books. These are the books I browse through over and over to plan and dream about vacations.

If you read this blog often you already know that I love planning vacations. And because the actual vacation usually includes driving and/or flying, and relaxing, vacations and BOOKS go so well together.

Related post: My four book vacation.

Most recently I wrote about trips to Jamaica and Memphis.

I love reading travel books, and this is one of my favorite sections in the library; I always have a couple of books borrowed from this section! But these books I’m listing below, I actually own, and I use them again and again.

Continue reading

‘THE PARIS BOOKSELLER’

As if this title wasn’t compelling enough – Paris + Books – this new historical fiction chronicles the history of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company, a literary home to American expatriates and famous writers in the 1920s, focusing on the life of its founder Sylvia Beach.

The book was additionally fascinating to me because it tells how Beach published Ulysses when it was banned in America. (I wrote my master’s thesis on Ulysses.) Very rarely – maybe once before – can I recommend a modern work of historical fiction that is related to the excruciating, yet brilliant book that I studied in detail.

Continue reading

MY FOUR BOOK VACATION

I’m pausing my travel posts to tell you about the four books I read on vacation.

Previous Post: Mesa Verda National Park

Previous Post: Durango, Colorado

Due to the nature of the vacation, I brought three different types of books: 1) Library book – don’t want to take to pool, so this was mainly for passenger seat reading 2) Kindle version to read at night, to not keep lights on that bother others and 3) older paperbacks I can take to the pool.

I was able to read a lot in all of these circumstances, especially since we drove around 20 hours each direction. So I’m sharing four book recommendations (two are older books and two are newer releases):

Continue reading

ST. AUGUSTINE!

After visiting Jamestowne last summer, I became interested in the even earlier Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida, “America’s oldest city.”

My family enjoys traveling to historical places, and I love the beach, especially the Atlantic, so I expected this would be a great spring break destination for us. The famous city also checked the fishing (my husband) and ghost tour boxes. We stayed at the perfect campground, and there was so much to do in the area we could fill up several more trips with activities. St. Augustine exceeded our expectations!

We traveled in our motorhome, and I realized I had never been in Georgia before, having always flown to Florida and therefore never had the “experience” of driving through Atlanta…I’m not sure how soon we’ll be doing that again!

Continue reading

MY FAVORITE BOOK SO FAR THIS YEAR

I am making my way through my reading list for early 2021 and can already enthusiastically recommend this new historical fiction about the city of Savannah and the “Titanic of the South”:

Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan

In a dual timeline, Callahan tells the story of the doomed steam ship Pulaski, which set sail from Savannah in 1838. Many of the city’s most prestigious families were on board to sail to Baltimore for the summer. But during the second night, a boiler exploded, and the ship sank. Many perished and those who did survive waited several days for rescue in the open sea or faced a harrowing journey in a lifeboat. Families were broken, assets (many took their gold, silver, china with them) were at the bottom of the ocean; this tragedy affected Savannah for years to come. But until reading this book, I knew nothing of this disaster!

The present day timeline follows Everly who is curating a museum’s exhibit on the disaster while recovering from her own personal tragedy.

Continue reading

‘THE LAST TRAIN TO KEY WEST’

I’m excited to tell you about a new book by an author who has quickly become a favorite of mine. First, because she writes about locations that I love. And secondly, because she tells great stories within a context of history and culture.

The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton

I’ve written before about how I love Key West and have even taken my kids there. So although the title would have piqued my interest anyway, this is the third book I have enjoyed by Chanel Cleeton, the first two being set in Cuba, another of the defining destinations of my life.

Continue reading
« Older posts

© 2024 Leslie's Bookcase

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑