Bestseller Travel: Escape With A Few Good Books This Weekend

September 4, 2009 at 11:28 AM | by egw | Comments (0)

Maybe you're already off gallivanting for this Labor Day weekend, and maybe you're only dreaming about it. Hey, we sympathize! But either way, you can always do a little armchair traveling. With the help of the current New York Times bestseller list, we suggest one of the following cities for some end of summer reading:

Charleston, South Carolina
South of Broad, blockbuster author Pat Conroy's first novel in 14 years, follows a group of high school friends reuniting in 1989 for their 20th reunion.
Pack it: If you're also off to see old friends at home. Celebrate the people who made you you!
Skip it: If you're heading for storm territory—much of the book's back half is dedicated (spoiler!) to the ravages of Category 5 Hurricane Hugo.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts
That Old Cape Magic is like a beach vacation for author Richard Russo, most of whose books are set in dreary post-industrial towns.
Pack it: If you're going to the Cape, obviously! Other posh East Coast enclaves would do.
Skip it: If you're traveling with your significant other; the book's two weddings notwithstanding, it delves deeply into the dissolution of a marriage. And its titular magic did not extend so far as its female characters for one reviewer, who wrote that Russo's women "are like smooth, shiny ball bearings, their interiors impenetrable and unknowable."

Stockholm, Sweden:
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson has been parked on the paperback bestseller list for a bit this summer, with its lurid tale of a journalist researching family secrets in bucolic Scandinavia, helped by his punk-rock hacker assistant back in town.
Pack it: To be pleasantly surprised that Stockholm is not full of deranged killers, after all.
Skip it: If you want to sleep on the plane—it's a real page-turner.

[Photo: wondermike]

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