by N/A
In this travel guide for ardent readers, two book lovers team up to create an eclectic and infinitely browsable guide to literary landmarks in Europe and the United States. Divided into two sections, the book begins with broad thematic chapters: Author Houses and Museums, Literary Festivals and Walking Tours, and Hotels, Bars, and Restaurants where famed scribes sipped, supped and slumbered. From Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Old Courthouse Museum immortalised in "To Kill a Mockingbird". The second half of the book is devoted to ten in-depth explorations of author and place - peppered with still more interesting facts, cross-references, sidebars, pull-quotes, and reading suggestions, this book is an ideal bedside companion and browser's delight. Among the possibilities to ponder?Joining in a rousing rendition of Robert Burns' "Auld Lang Syne" during a Burns' Night Supper, standing in the spot where The Maltese Falcon's Miles Archer met his match with a dangerous dame, morphing into Mr. Darcy or Lizzie Bennett for a promenade around Bath's Royal Crescent, walking the windswept moors that inspired the Brontes, and taking part in a Stella and Stanley Shouting Contest in the Big Easy. Whether it's checking into the Sun Valley hotel where Hemingway penned "For Whom the Bell Tolls", or doing battle with the 400- year-old windmills in La Mancha, Spain, that Cervantes' Don Quixote famously mistook for oppressive giants, one thing is certain: For literary-minded wanderers, the combination of reading and travel is a heady mix - especially if you happen to be sipping a pint in the pub where James Joyce and his heroic everyman Leopold Bloom once did the same.Even celebrated writers felt the allure of following in the footsteps of the authors they admired, such as John Steinbeck, who once dreamed of making like Jack London and sailing across the Pacific on a freighter. Readers of "Novel Destinations" will discover a truism that Steinbeck well knew: "No two journeys are alike" - whether the final destination lies between the pages of a favourite book or across the expanse of the open road ahead.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 01 Jul 2008
ISBN 10: 1426202776
ISBN 13: 9781426202773
From the Trade Paperback edition.