celebrating books & the literary lifestyle
Earlier this year I started listening to Rick Steve’s travel podcast and have picked up several book recommendations.
(Note that I am no longer going to provide links to Amazon…I trust you can find the book yourself and ideally at your local bookstore, at the library, or another online vendor.)
On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer is an edited version of the journal Steves kept while making this trip when he was 23.
Continue readingI 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.
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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.
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Because this author’s previous book is one of my favorite of all times, I had very high expectations for
See my previous posts on: A Gentleman in Moscow and his first book, Rules of Civility.
This new title refers to the first road to stretch across America. The intro pages included a map, which I always appreciate.
Continue readingI’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):
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This post is number 2 in a series of 3 about my family’s summer vacation. My other hobby besides reading is planning vacations. Click here to read about our first stop, Mesa Verde National Park.
Durango, Colorado was a fun stop between the two National Parks we visited this summer. It’s a vibrant and beautiful former mining hub with so much to do!
Continue readingI wanted to tell you about two new books I especially enjoyed:
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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 readingI 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”:
by Patti CallahanIn 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 readingI’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.
by Chanel CleetonI’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.
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