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Friday, November 18, 2011

Top Literary Travel Picks


Image above: Portrait of Marco Polo (1254-1324). Cover of the first printed edition of The Travels of Marco Polo. Illumination; 1477.

Posted by Staff

Planning a trip over the river and through the woods this season?  Perhaps you're looking for something a bit more restful (or inexpensive) this year.  Booklist recently published it's list of top literary travel books of 2011 and if you're looking for an entertaining read that truly takes you somewhere else, try one of these titles.  Descriptions and reviews are taken from Booklist.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo.  "I cook to comprehend the place I've land in," muses the author in her first book, a vividly written memoir of her adventures in travel and taste in the Middle East.

India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking by Anand Giridharadas.  The author relates his perambulations around  India, which revealed to him significant aspects of how India is changing to meet modern ways.

Saved By Beauty: Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran by Roger Housden.  From his visit to the locales where writing was invented to his conversations with Iranian artists, Housden, a poet, shines a light on an Iran few Westerners will ever glimpse.

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments From Lives on the Road  by Paul Theroux.  Esteemed travel writer Theroux's admirers will welcome this anthology of travel accounts he found admirable or enlightening.

To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron.  Kailas is a sacred, snow-capped mountain of the Himalayas, and Thubron traveled along the Karnali River (a tributary of the Ganges) by foot on a long and often treacherous trek to visit this mystical peak.

To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey Through China and Korea by Tessa Morris-Suzuki.  This author is a keen observer and a fine writer and she has combined these skills to provide an absorbing analysis of the past, present, and future of a volatile region.

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