Is this how traveling makes you feel? Is this the way you want to act when you discover a wonderful travel book or movie that takes you away?

We travelers who read are endlessly curious.  We want to know about all the things that might make us want to travel. And when we plan our trips we want to know all about the cultures we are visiting. Most of the time we get inspired and informed by travel literature or movies–anything with a strong sense of place.

But there are other things that inspire us to wander the world, too. Music,  museums, festivals,  food, wine,  art, shopping,  challenge, photography–there is no end to the inspirations. And there are many styles of travel, from jet setting to five-star resorts to backpacking on a shoestring; from traveling solo to traveling en famille–even if someone in the family has four legs instead of two.

And because one person cannot adequately bring you tidbits about so many different ideas, I have invited some inspiring people to partner with A Traveler’s Library.  Some of these people you are already familiar with. Some of them may be new to you. But all of them are specialists and fine writers. I’m jumping for joy about the fresh breeze that is wafting through the library and all the new ideas that these partners will bring in their periodic posts.

And expect surprises. We may shake up the way things have been here. And there may be new partners waiting in the wings with even more new ideas. Enough suspense?? Here’s the list of (at least) once-a-month contributors that you can look forward to reading during the first full week of each month.

Music Monday by Kerry Dexter

Culture Travel Tuesday by Dr. Jessie Voigts

Wednesday Matinee by Jane Boursaw

Pet Travel Thursday by Edie Jarolim

Family Travel Friday by Jennifer Close

To learn more about each of these new contributors, each experienced in her field (heck, we even have at least two PhDs among our partners!), click over to the Contributors’ Page. Go visit their blogs and support them on their home turf. And come back next week when they will start bringing you shiny new travel ideas.

What inspires YOUR travel?

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Ken in Rome

Has it been five years since we were in Italy? Unbelievable! But Italy stays with you once you have traveled there.

Here’s another of my round-up posts (read: she’s traveling and not blogging every day).

Italian scene in Le Marche

Author Interview with Susan Van Allen who wrote 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go (Obviously ALL of Italy).

I learned more about some destinations in Italy that I had not heard of, and much about the Venus/Mary connections. But most important, I learned that Italian guys don’t pinch so much any more. (So it wasn’t just because I was getting old!) And of course Susan gave us some great tips on books about Italy.

Irreverent Curiosity by David Farley (Calcata) and a bonus–interview with David in which he recommends his own favorite Italy books.

In Irreverent Curiosity, Farley goes on a quest for a very unusual relic. I said: If this book were only about one of the thousands of bits and pieces of holy personages that populate Catholic churches (bones, skin, organs), particularly in Italy, I would lose interest fast.  But cleverly, Farley mixes religious history with present day culture, and even the clash of various national cultures together with a crystal clear picture of an idyllic medieval village in Italy.

Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis, (Naples) one of my very favorite travel writers.

Before reading this book, I had NO IDEA how the people of Naples suffered during World War II, and how tragi-comic the miscommunications between troops could be. I wrote:

Sometimes I thought of Naples ’44 as the true forerunner of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 or M.A.S.H, except that Naples ’44 is not fiction.  Lewis lived through this. The people of Naples lived through it, amazingly.

Italy Out of Hand: A Capricious Tour (Most of Italy) by Barbara Hodgson is a beautiful book, sensuous to hold, but so much more. Okay, the most fascinating thing? Why the Duke’s portrait was always painted in profile. In May of 2009 I kicked off a whole week in Italy with this book, (which the dog liked too, but you’ll have to read about that on the original post) and I said:

Author Barbara Hodgson dwells on details–some serious, some quite mad–just like the country.  Her attention to detail is such that even the books typeface brings up a little story about a long-forgotten Italian.

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

Michelangelo (Rome and Florence)–This is a very short piece that covers two books and a video and my sad travel tale. Speaking of Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, I said:

The book’s 384 pages may have more details about, say, the mixing of colors, than some readers can tolerate, but I loved every fussy, gossipy moment of it.

Italian Street Scene

A Season with Verona , Italian Neighbors and Italian Education(Verona)  by Tim Parks.

Before I went to Italy, I was happy to find these books by Tim Parks about life in present day Italy.

 Adding books like these to my travel library lifts the curtain that separates cultures, and helps me understand the real world beyond the familiar tourist grounds of hotels and restaurants and museums.

Venice Gondola Traffic Jam

Acqua Alta and other mysteries (Venice)  by Donna Leon. When I wrote that paean to Donna Leon in 2009, she had written 16 mysteries. Now she has produced 4 more plus Brunetti’s Cookbook and several other unrelated books. Her books taught me a lot about present day Venice.

Leon (and Brunetti) also led me to hidden treasures of Venice, and explained the little cultural secrets that sometimes elude a tourist. I went on a Comissario Brunetti alert, recognizing street and plaza names and remembering the crime that took place in a particular canal.

Of course, I have written other things about Italy, books and movies and travel experiences, but these are the best of the books, I believe. A little something from Rome, Florence, Naples, Venice,Verona and the rest of Italy for you to browse on while I am elsewhere.

What’s your latest recommendation for movies and books from Italy?

Instead of overloading you with links to Amazon in this post, I’m hoping if you are interested in a particular book, you’ll go to the article and click on the title OR you can go to that Amazon search box on the far right and find anything you want. It helps pay the rent on my blog site. Thanks!

You’ll find disclaimers on each blog post, but the pictures here belong to me, with the exception of the book covers and the picture of Naples, which is form Flickr with Creative Commons license.

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Paris from the Heart Unboxed

NOTICE: I will give this collection (which is priced at $45.00) to one reader chosen at random from those who comment on this post. American Resident, Over 18. (By  Friday April

Destination: Paris, France

Book: Paris from the Heart: Ultimate Walking Tours to Fun, Fashion and Freedom (November 2010) by Jan Dolphin

This beautiful little collection of travel guidebooks to Paris, Paris From the Heart, has been sitting on my shelf since last fall, when the author, Jan Dolphin, sent it to me. I looked at it from time to time, but didn’t know if I really would write about it, since I don’t generally do guidebooks at A Traveler’s Library.  However, I decided to do yet another France on Friday today and tell you about a very different kind of guide to Paris.

The first way in which this guide is different, is that it has one general and five location-specific, separate, thin, paperback books. I love looking at the package. The author, an interior designer, has assembled this package with true artistic flair. All six books enclosed in a cardboard jacket, sport antique posters, gorgeous photography, and charming hand-drawn maps.

Luxumbourg Garden The Thinkers

When I was looking at guidebooks for my trip to Paris, I bemoaned the fact that they generally are too large to lug around, pull out when you stop for a croissant aux chocolate. (Diversion: I recently learned from Alexandra, hostess at Chez Sven, the green B & B in Cape Cod, that chocolate crosssants originated with a traditional after school snack of a bar of chocolate between two slices of white bread. fin de diversion)

Since I would only be covering a small area of Paris, I only needed in-depth guides to one arrondissement (neighborhood) at a time, so I thought perhaps the Paris from the Heart collection would have served my purpose.
In addition to an Introduction booklet with essentials like packing tips and a little vocabulary, the Paris from the Heart collection covers walking tours of the Left Bank, the Right Bank, a walk along the Seine, Montmarte, and Day Trips–the essentials for a first time trip to Paris, so in theory, you could carry  just the booklets you need for the day.
In reality, while this quirky guide might make an interesting travel companion, it will not substitute for a more detailed guide and accurate maps. Dolphin starts by telling us how she first became enamored with Paris.

The sapphire blue bottle

Evening in Paris perfume newspaper advertisement

Dolphin’s Proustian memory experience begins not with a pastry, but with the aroma of Evening of Paris perfume in its exotic sapphire-blue bottle. (Diversion: As a child, I wanted to buy one of those beautiful blue bottles as a present for my mother every Christmas. And I yearned to be all grown up and glamorous enough to wear a perfume with such a sophisticated ambiance. Although the blue of that bottle has always been my favorite color, I later realized that truly exotic perfumes are not generally available at the drugstore in downtown Killbuck, Ohio. fin de diversion) This initial trip down memory lane, sets the stage for the author’s presentation of her Paris.

The beauty and charm of such an intensely personal guide falls down if you want or need information about something the author has not chosen as HER personal favorite. She loves art, shopping, antique buildings. Her enthusiasm is underscored by liberal use of superlatives and exclamation marks. But she also invites you to create your own journal as you go. Each book leaves many lined blank pages  where you can personalize the book.

I think it would be interesting for a first-time visitor to follow one or more of these suggested routes through Paris, and make liberal notes about the things she saw and experienced. A book gains value when someone writes in it, and what a lovely gift that would be from mother to daughter or granddaughter.

Cobblestone street in Latin Quarter

Anyone who yearns for a romantic Paris will enjoy looking at these beautiful little books. However, if you have your own ideas about what you want to see, or if you like to wander undirected and make your own discoveries, you definitely will need a supplemental guidebook for your travel library.

Photos: Most of the pictures here are from my own trip to Paris, and if you would like to reproduce them, please ask me about rights. The two Evening in Paris pictures are linked to the web pages from which they came.

How do you use a guidebook? Do you want one that gives you a specific route, or one that describes many places so that you can map out your own walk? Personalized guide or more matter of fact? (Some people had already commented before I added the offer to giveaway my collection–they are eligible. See Notice at top of post.)

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Tucson Festival of Books main drag

Destination: Tucson, Arizona

Event: Tucson Festival of Books, 2011

[See more photos on my Facebook page]

The Tucson Festival of Books has grown rapidly in its three years. Organizers say there were 100,000 people there in March 2011, and I think that is true.

People of all ages cluster around tables piled with books. Colorful paper parasols bloom as people shelter from the sun. Wearing my green volunteer shirt sporting a big black tarantula, I attract questions–”Where is Elmore Leonard?” “Where are they selling caramel corn?” Follow your nose–the aroma of roasting corn and caramel corn from the center of the mall–the Festival’s stomach.

There is so much to see and do that it has taken me a week to get my thoughts together and give you a mini-slice of the Festival–the parts that I personally experienced. My choices this year were guided by two questions–what could I add to my travel library? and what could I add to my knowledge of American Indians and the literature about them?

Beresford Bears and fans

After making my way past the storybook characters in front of the University Book Store, I attended a panel of authors discussing mystery movels featuring modern day American Indians as protagonists.

Craig Johnson (Wyoming-Crow and Cheyenne), Sara Sue Hoklotubbe (Oklahoma-Cherokee), Margaret Coel (Colorado/Wyoming-Arapaho) and Thomas Perry(New York State-Iroquois and Seneca)

The writers discussed how to transmit culture that is not your own, since only one of the panelists is an American Indian. (They agreed that American Indian is their preferred term over the P.C. Native American.) Craig Johnson remarked, “How do you NOT put Indians in when you write a Western novel? They are such an important part of America.”  I talk more about this panel over at the Quincy Tahoma Blog. (Article coming next Monday–sorry if you have been looking for it.)

Next I listened to two women who chucked the every day grind to follow very different paths.  Lisa Napoli left a job at National Public Radio to help start the first radio station in Bhutan. In Radio Bhutan (February 2011), she talks about The Happiest Kingdom, and her adjustments to life in a strange place. It all started when she met a cute guy at a party.

Polly Letofsky went even further. Obsessed since she was a child with the idea of walking around the world, she set off to walk around the world, raising money for breast cancer research. Her book, 3 MPH, follows the 5 years during which she covered 14,000 miles and touched on four continents.Polly’s lively presentation had me howling with laughter.

Lisa Napoli, author of Radio Shangri La

Polly Letofsky, author of 3 MPH

Panel on Place as Character

I was fortunate to be the driver for Martin Cruz Smith, the author of a series of mysteries set in Russia –and some other ones in foreign places like New York City and Cuba. He is best known for the Arkady Renko series that started with Gorky Park. (Saying goodbye to Smith on Sunday was like the melancholy of closing a good book.) An outdoor tent housed his panel with Jennifer Carrell, Cara Blackand Josh Bazell.

The subject of their panel was Place as Character--a concept readers of A Traveler’s Library are familiar with.  Jennifer Lee Carrell said in research for her mystery built around Shakespeare’s Macbeth, she found that “places have produced character.” Cara Black says that Paris is “an exacting muse” and she writes about “the darker side of the City of Light.” I thought that Josh Bazell made the most important comment. He says he wants to find “the things I was not expecting.  It is not memorable if it is what you expect.” In other words, finding the details that go beyond cliché.

Carolyn O'Bagy Davis

Finally, I went to hear a friend, Carolyn O’Bagy Davis talk about her book, Hopi Summer, which has been chosen as the book that all Arizona will be reading and discussing this year in One Book Arizona. Carolyn showed slides documenting the 1920′s visit of an Eastern family to the Hopi reservation. The remaining family members gave her copies of journals and diaries and photos and she took them to the Hopi reservation and talked to descendants of the people in the pictures. What a great book for the traveler’s library, if you are going to the Southwest.

In fact,  all these authors definitely expanded my to-be-read file of books that inspire travel. [If you are considering buying one, please check the Amazon carousel above that features just these authors. Convenient for you. A few cents for me.]

If you are on Facebook, check out my personal Facebook page and look at my album of photos from the Tucson Festival of Books.  And please tell your Facebook friends about this post and my Facebook pictures. (I own the copyright to all photos here. If you are interested in using one, please contact me at vmb at atravelerslibrary.com)

Book your Travel now: Tucson Festival of Books: March 10-11, 2012

Do you have a book fair or festival near you? Tell us about it. Have you read any of the book authors mentioned here? Which ones should we read?

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Destination: Yemen

Book: The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen: Adventures in the Oldest City on Earth (NEW 2010) by Jennifer Steil

She was a woman

who fell from the sky

in robes of dew

and became a city.

Jennifer Steil uses this poetic description of Sana’a, the capitol of Yemen as a frontispiece for her travel memoir, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky. Until I read the poem, I assumed that Steil was ‘the woman who fell from the sky,’ and in fact she was. The double meaning works perfectly.

Steil is invited to teach the principles of journalism to writers at an English-speaking newspaper in Yemen. Her task is complicated by the fact that few of them can write in English, none have ever studied journalism and they have no idea how to start a story, track down sources, or get both sides of a controversy. Additionally, her boss, the publisher, works as media adviser for the president of the country. No conflict there, he assures her.

When it becomes obvious that her short initial stay will not do the job, the boss asks her to come back and stay for a year as editor of the paper. We, as readers, are immersed in the world of getting out a newspaper when the male reporters are work on their own schedule, and the women cannot go out alone, interview men, or stay at the office after two p.m.

Her job allows her (and us vicariously) to travel to other parts of Yemen and get a fairly good view of life in that country. Although she writes with a reporters verve, I kept slipping into fairy tale mode because this world seems so unrelated to mine.

We share her amazement to learn that underneath the long robes, the women wear skin-tight jeans and sparkling tank tops. I had to wonder as I plunged eagerly through chapter after chapter, if I would have been able to be as even-handed as she, as non-judgmental at the practices she observed.

As a Western woman, she dressed very conservatively, and wore a scarf, but the Yemenis considered her, in a sense, sexless. She could go alone on the streets, even at night, although she would be verbally harassed. She could go with men to restaurants where women generally did not go. They even invited her to chew qat (the mildly intoxicating leaves that Yemeni men are never without) with them. Although I still have no desire to go to Yemen, Steil paints an attractive picture.  Describing her first view of the city, she says:

Sand-colored mountains rose from the plain in every direction…Below us stood the fantasia in gingerbread that is Sana’a's Old City, a cluster of tall, square, cookie-colored homes trimmed with what looked like white frosting, surrounded by thick, high walls.  Sabri pointed out some of the more prominent of the city’s hundreds of mosques, liberally sprinkled across the city in every direction, their slender minarets thrust perpetually toward God.

I told readers of A Traveler’s Library early this year that my favorite book of the year would be The Invisible Mountain, about Uruguay. Now there’s a real horse race. The Woman Who Fell from the Sky won my heart in so many ways. I urge you to read it, partly because of the political realities that are important for the rest of the world to understand, but mostly because it is just a darned good book and belongs in a travel library.

I would be remiss not to mention that the book gets a bit gushy at the end. I wasn’t going to give you a spoiler, but for those who don’t care about spoilers, or who love to dish the dirt, here’s an scandal article in the London Mail on line edition. If you read the article, keep in mind they are going on about a section that is less than a tenth of the book and misleadingly make it sound as though it is the main book. They need a coach like Steil to show them real journalism.

Jennifer Steil is on Facebook, where you can see pictures of her with the love of her life.

Isn’t it interesting that my two favorite books have been of countries that I knew little about and that seemed impossibly exotic?  What do you make of that? What destinations make YOUR favorite travel books?

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FIVE readers will each win one book for his or her own travel library. The contest is entirely random, but just for fun, I’m asking you to browse through the library and tell me which travel literature, travel essays, travel memoir, or a book that tugs you to a certain place you would choose out of all we talked about–if you had a choice–which, this being a random drawing–you don’t.

What You Can Win

There are five books and I will reveal their names starting Monday, August 3, adding a new one each day that week. (Four have been discussed here and one is a ringer.) Remember, only one entry per person, so you may win just one book.

What You Do

1. Leave a comment on any post between (Friday, July 31) to the end of the contest (Friday, August 14). (See #2 for content of your comment)
2. Browse through A Traveler’s Library and pick a book that I have discussed that you would like to win.  Then send me a COMMENT or tweet me a TWEET saying:  “My choice would be (insert name of book here).”
3. For your own security, we advise against including personal information like address, phone number, birth date, or shoe size.
4. OR–Tweet me a message addressed to @pen4hire with the same message, but mention A Traveler’s Library in the tweet.

Dates

Friday, July 31 (1:00 a.m. MST) through Friday, August 14 (Midnight MST)

Pesky Stuff You Need to Know

1. Sorry, but for technical reasons, this is only open to people residing in the United States of America.
2. You must be at least 18 years old.
3. Only one entry per person will count.
4. One winner will be chosen by random drawing each day from Monday, August 17 through Friday, August 21.
5. For more on A Traveler’s Library Contest Rules, see the page called (duh) Contest Rules.

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A lonely road

But as I am still thinking about American road trips, I thought I should mention road guide series that can be very helpful to those who follow the Larry McMurtry route in his book Roads, and follow the freeways.

• Insight Guides United States on the Road’s comprehensive look at travel on American highways gets high marks for covering a whole lot of this country plus forays into Canada and Mexico.
• Drive I-95 by Stan Posner and Sandra Phillips-Posner.For driving north south, Boston to Miami on I-95.
• Along Interstate 75 by Dave Hunter. For I-75 from Detroit to the Florida border. Both these books provide strip maps loaded with symbols to inform the driver, and supplemental information and background material. Hunter’s book tends to be more chatty and personal, while the Posner book seems to be better organized and visually easier to follow.
• Scenic Highways and Byways. National Geographic provides a look at the smaller roads preferred by Steinbeck.
• Live Your Road Trip Dream by Phil and Carol White covers everything from the monetary to the psychological preparation for totally moving your life to the road.
• Caution Funny Signs Ahead: Road Trip America, belongs in the traveler’s library just for fun.

For a comprehensive list of books that guide the driver, see Road Trip America.

Photo by VMB, all rights reserved.

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African Village Food Booth at Tucson Gem Show

I talked with a vendor who explained this mask to me. It comes from the Ivory coast, he said, and represents a bird who is a story teller.  How appropriate for A Traveler’s Library.

The Story Teller Mask. For more info go to http://www.africanmasks.ca/history-tradition

I mentioned in my post about geography, that I am rather clueless about Africa.  A whole continent, and what do I know?  I have seen a few movies. The Last King of Scotland.  Out of Africa with Meryl Streep. The Snows of Kilimanjaro with Ava Gardner. King Solomon’s Mine with Deborah Kerr.  I am dating myself here, so better stop.

And literature?  Well, despite the many fine books available on Africa, I do not have many in my travel library.  In my usual quest for detective stories that tell me about a country, I did read Alexander McCall Smith’s very humorous The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and The Kalahari Typing School for Men.  There are more in the series and I will probably read them, too.

But I need to find good literature by Africans, and here is a blog that is a good source. A writer from Zimbabwe, Emmanuel Sigauke, gives not only interesting posts, but links to many African sites and blogs and writers.  I am running out of excuses for my ignorance.

Photos by VMB

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Book: Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving

Moonlight illuminates tile walls and stone lions that are more than 600 years old. The light peoples the walls of the Alhambra with romantic ghosts.  Washington Irving knew the evocative power of moonlight. In his book , Tales of the Alhambra, which describes time that he spent in the wonderful building that dominates Granada Spain, he weaves stories that take place in daylight shadows and others that slink through the dark.  “…clothing naked realities with the illusions of the memory and the imagination,” as he puts it.

Thanks to Irving’s book, when we went to a bank that sells tickets to the Alhambra, Ken and I bought tickets for both the daytime tour and the evening tour.  We lined up at the appointed time for the daytime tour and wandered on cobblestone streets to graceful stone archways, past flower-bordered paths and into the endless intricacy of Moorish rooms covered in jewel-toned tiles.

In one courtyard, we came across a wedding party. The bride, a slightly-past-sell-date dark haired lady stuffed into her white gown, led the mustachioed groom toward a fountain for wedding pictures. On the rim of a reflecting pond, a pair of lovers did what lovers do, oblivious of the throngs of sightseers.  The Spanish sun glanced brightly off the fountains and turned the flowers into neon.

When we went back in the evening, low lights along the paths led us into a world of shadow, where shape, not color, became the star attraction.  We saw subtle details of ceilings and arches that daylight’s bright colors distracted us from noticing.  But we also saw the possibilities. We knew suddenly why Moorish Spain held such allure for a story teller like Irving and for the Romantics of the nineteenth century.

Have you ever read a travel book by a literary figure of a bygone era that struck you as completely in tune with your travels today?  What older books do you have in your library? Please join the conversation and tell us about your books.

By the way, the links in these posts usually take you to Amazon, but today’s link takes you to a free on line source.  Stay tuned, I will soon be talking about all the myriad ways we receive our words today. (See another post on Spain, Riding with Don Quixote.

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Destination: Venice

Gondola Traffic Jam in Venice, Italy Photo by VMB

Books: Any mystery byDonna Leon

Donna Leon has made a career out of killing off many people in just one city. But with all the romance and mystery of Venice, Italy, why not?

Unlike the many writers who have plumbed the rich history of Venice, Donna Leon goes after the gritty underbelly of today’s Italy. Grubbing around in police works and political corruption she exposes plenty of things that the tourist board will not be telling you about. I gobbled the books  down like potato chips before, during and after my Italian trip.

In 2008 the yearly high tides in Venice reached exceptionally high marks, making Leon’s 1996 (reprinted in 2005)  Acqua Alta , timely all over again. Leon’s  police procedural mysteries (16 so far) about the personable family man, Comissario Brunetti, come across as a love letter to Venice. But not a love letter from a smitten teen. Her books strike me as a mature kind of love letter that says I know all your warts and I love you still.

When I went to Venice, the romantic decay all seemed just a little too seedy. And the city that once built an empire on commerce, now trades in made-in-China copies of Venetian masks. Talk about tacky souvenirs–I thought that if I saw one more pair of men’s underwear sporting a bit of David’s anatomy (that’s David by Michelangelo)—I would jump in a canal.

Leon (and Brunetti) also led me to hidden treasures of Venice, and explained the little cultural secrets that sometimes elude a tourist.I went on a Comissario Brunetti alert, recognizing street and plaza names and remembering the crime that took place in a particular canal. The British fan site for the author emphasizes the way that place dominates her novels with a wonderful graphic map

You may want to start with her latest book,  The Girl of His Dreams , but once you add Leon to your travel library, I’ll bet you can’t read just one.

Thrillers from Baldacci in Washington D.C. , mysteries from Donna Leon in Venice.  Why does this kind of book make such a satisfactory travel read?  And what other mystery writers have you read that add spice to your travel? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

* NOTE: In 2011 the number of mysteries has climbed to 20 and you can also buy  Brunetti’s Cookbook. Thank goodness. I’ve been drooling over those pages in the novels where his wife whips up a wonderful dinner for the family.

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