So much of our travels can be enjoyed through the prism of literature. Some writers are intrinsically connected to a destination--e.g., Gabriel García Márquez with northern Colombia; Thomas Hardy with Dorset; R.K. Narayan with Madras; James Joyce with Dublin. The literary travel possibilities are nearly endless - have a read!

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The writing of 'In the Footsteps of Dracula: A Personal Journey and Travel Guide'

Old Parish Church Cemetery in Whitby, England My obsession to travel to every site related to either the fictional Count Dracula or his real historical counterpart, Prince Vlad Dracula the Impaler, grew out of a visit to Whitby, England, where part of the novel Dracula takes place.  I stood on the cemetery hill (top) where, in Bram Stoker's Dracula Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray spent hour after hour sitting on their "favourite seat" (a bench placed over a suicide's grave near the edge of the…

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Literary cruises in 'Whatever Your Pastime or Interest, There May Be A Cruise For You!'

Valtours/Dreamstime.com Whatever hobby, pursuit or pastime you enjoy, it’s possible there’s a voyage that will let you combine it with the pleasures of cruising. From food to fashion, music to mystery, the offerings are as varied as the destinations which are included on ship itineraries. An Internet search for cruises that interest you may turn up one or more alternatives. While cruise lines are gradually beginning to return to normal services, it’s necessary to check what sailings are being…

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Joan Margarit, latest laureate of Spain's top literary prize

  Each year since 1976, Spain's Ministry of Culture has awarded the country's equivalent of the Booker or the Nobel Prize for Literature to one of the world's most distinguished living Spanish-language writers. Past laureates have included not just Spain's poet Rafael Alberti as well as novelists Camilo José Cela, Miguel Delibes, Juan Goytisolo, and Ana María Matute, but also legendary Latin American luminaries such as Argentine Jorge Luis Borges; Cuban Alejo Carpentier; Mexicans Carlos…

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Reading (and eating) your way through Puerto Rico

  Many are the guidebooks that have been written about this tropical Latin Caribbean island, but few by Puerto Ricans themselves, and even fewer which focus on its delicious and sometimes exotic cuisine, fed by fresh local ingredients. Three years ago, now 40-year-old writer (and U.S. Marine reservist!) Jessica van Dop DeJesús (the "van Dop" courtesy of her Dutch husband) set out to remedy that by spending a month touring her native island with skilled photographer friend Ítalo Morales to…

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  • ...and do not forget travelling, too, Ed. The secret is, perhaps, that I often forget to take my keys with me, but never a book.

  • Good question, Terry, and London Orbital sounds like another Baker recommendation that I'm putting on my to-read list. How you manage to find time to read so much (and run, and have a pint, etc.) continues to astonish and humiliate me. 

     

  • Picked up again Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, and it is a wonderful read into the corners of London and the tight corners of almost forgotten history -- and how that glorious history is so often squashed beneath developers' brochure copywriting crimes. It reminds me a great deal of another fantastic read -- W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, about a walk in Suffolk, England. Sebald was touted for the Nobel Prize for Literature before a car crash ended his life. Why is it that so many writers get hit by vehicles -- Albert Camus, Nathaneal West, Italo Svevo (the ones coming immediately to mind). Walking around with their heads in the air?

  • Reply to Terence Baker: No, Slad is in the southern part of Gloucestershire.  It is in an area of valleys to the north of Bath.  There is plenty of cider in the UK outside Somerset :)

  • I put down -- to recommence very soon -- Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, concerning his 2000 walk around London's M25 motorway, or at least as near as he could get without being splattered by speeding cars. Another great recommendation, written in an unique style to the usual travel book. I only put it down because I was travelling to Ethiopia last week and took with me Nicholas Jubber's far-fetched but entertaining The Prester Quest, in which he took a letter 800 years old that never made it and was originally addressed to the supposedly mythical Ethiopian Christian king Prester John.

  • Thanks Vicky. I thought Laurie Lee was from Somerset. It borders the Cotswolds, or maybe I am getting confused because of the title of his book Cider with Rosie, cider generally being associated with Somerset.

    I am just doing a session of Dervla Murphy travel books ... her one on Laos, followed by her one on Siberia, then Ethiopia with a Mule, and I just found two more -- as yet unread, on Coburg and Madagascar. I recommend her.

  • Read about the idyllic corner of the Cotswolds, Britain, where the writer Laurie Lee grew uphttp://britainonpageandscreen.blogspot.co.uk/

  • IFWTWA invites non-members to attend its 2013 Hawaii conference - see http://www.examiner.com/article/ifwtwa-invites-non-members-to-atten...

  • I'd like to introduce City of the Green-Eyed Beauty, a literary guide to Istanbul, following the footsteps of Orhan Pamuk, Barbara Nadel and Pierre Loti. Three very different writers with one thing in common: fascination with Istanbul.

  • Interesting choice of reading, Terence. I just searched for the book and wound up reading an article on Wikipedia, for what that's worth. It gave me the impression that Mandeville was a little short on reportorial objectivity, but probably no worse than Fox News. 

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