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Tags: Travel Guides / Vikings / Arthur Frommer / Books / Guidebooks / Grjotgard / → All Tags

Attention Medieval Vikings: Visit Skotland At Your Peril

The modern travel guidebook genre is usually traced to Arthur Frommer's seminal 1957 book Europe on 5 Dollars a Day, but tips on making the most of your time abroad have been published in some form or another for centuries. A 13th century Viking travel guide, for example, highlights some of the potential pitfalls of visiting Scotland. A nifty story in the Telegraph points out that the Norse Vikings, as fierce as they may have been, were no match for some of the rougher tribes of Scotland and Ireland, who were said to butcher invaders on arrival.

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Tags: The Mile High Club / Sex / Sex Travel / Travel Books / Books / → All Tags

You Can't Legally Join The Mile High Club, But You Can Read About It

You might not be allowed to get frisky onboard Singapore Airlines' A380 with first class bed suites, and you sure aren't fitting into a regular airplane lavatory without arousing suspicion anytime soon, but that doesn't mean you can't at least read about joining the Mile High Club.

The new book, The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, is a collection of short tales recounting people's experiences putting more than just their tray tables and seatbacks in an upright and locked position.

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Tags: Literary Travel / Summer Reading / Books / → All Tags

The Worst Beach Books To Pack This Year

Every American outlet worth its salt is putting out a list of books for best beach reading this week in preparation for the glorious holiday weekend ahead. And while we've never seen a bandwagon we didn't want to jump on and eventually drive, we wonder why no one is offering a warning label of what not to bring on your Fourth of July road or plane trip. Finally, a raison d'etre! If these are in your carry-on, beware:

Jonathan Miles, Dear American Airlines. The New York Times cocktail columnist's debut is uproariously funny, but takes place entirely in Chicago O'Hare Airport on a cross-country trip gone wrong. We're scared even to pick it up in the vicinity of our suitcase for fear we will be jinxed.

Alice Hoffman, The Story Sisters. Hoffman's Turtle Moon and Practical Magic have comingled with sunblock in our beach bag before, but after the author went off on Twitter on a critic who wrote a mildly negative review, we're going to read something that's free to dislike.

Norman Ollestad, Crazy For The Storm. This memoir debuted at #10 on the Times Best-seller List for its riveting true story of an 11-year-old who survived a plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains, and we're looking forward to picking up when we have no plans to fly anywhere.

Emily Chenoweth, Hello Goodbye. Cosmopolitan put this novel about a girl on vacation with her brain-cancer mum on its Best Beach Books list, which means tears must be sexy this year. (See also: Every Jodi Picoult book. Have fun crying!)

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. There's no reason why this book is specifically bad for this year, but we once read it while being eaten alive by mosquitoes in the Russian countryside, and we've never forgiven ol' Melville from failing to distract us for our welts.

Related Stories:
· Aspiring Hotelier Reading List: Chip Conley's Book "Peak" [HC]
· What We're Reading coverage [Jaunted]
· Literary Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: josephrobertson]

Tags: Summer Reading / Books / Literary Travel / → All Tags

In-Flight Reading: Where This Summer's Best-Sellers Are Set

Don't just be an armchair traveler this summer -- relive your favorite new books with a trip to the cities where they take place. Buckle in! A book's all the in-flight entertainment you need.

Michael Connelly's "The Scarecrow" begins at the L.A. Times where hero Jack McEvoy is just being downsized -- timely! Shake your fist at the Times' headquarters (202 W. 1st St.), then head around the corner to the Lost Souls Cafe (124 W. 4th St.) for a "soul latte" sweetened with half-and-half and condensed milk. You'll need the energy to fight City Hall (200 N. Spring St.) while tracking cyber killers responsible for long-shelved murders.

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Tags: Books / What We're Reading / Armchair Travel / Travel Books / Recommended Travel Books / → All Tags

The Best American Travel Writing 2008: Armchair Travel at its Finest

Writing about the differences between in-flight magazines got me to thinking about how often I really do read long-form travel writing, compared with the staccato bursts of stylized news briefs one might find on, say, a travel blog. The truth is, I don't often read all the great feature stories published every month, even in magazines I subscribe to. But when I finally make the time to read a lush and descriptive feature by one of today's best travel writers, I'm always glad I did. That's why anthologies like the Best American Travel Writing series are so great. I recently finished reading this year's edition - which has stories originally published in 2008 - and enjoyed it immensely.

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Tags: Rick Steves / Travel Guides / Travel Shows / Iran / Books / → All Tags

The Appreciation: Rick Steves

After I graduated from college in 1992, I moved to Latvia for a couple of years to do the expat thing. As I criss-crossed the continent in search of further adventures, I held my trusty copy of Let's Go: Europe close, relying on it to point me toward the best hostels, museums, and cheap restaurants. Let's Go served me well, and I won't speak ill of it, but when a fellow backpacker shared with me an early copy of Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door, I never looked back. I felt Steves' Back Door guides not only contained better practical information, but helped me become a better traveler myself.

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Tags: Books / Germany Travel / → All Tags

Geek Travel: Frankfurt Book Fair Coming Up Soon

Book geeks, don't be shy: popping over to Frankfurt for the world's biggest annual book fair is nothing to be embarrassed about. Heck, we've done it. And you're not embarrassed to be seen in public with us, right?

If you're brave, here's the lowdown. You need to know that the general public visiting days for the fair are on the weekend of October 18 and 19--we recommend Sunday because last year over 70,000 people showed up on Saturday (and 15,000 less than that the day after).

This year Turkey is the guest of honor so their president's popping over to Germany to kick things off. (Wonder if anyone will ask him about how his country nearly prosecuted Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for anti-Turkish sentiment!) If you don't join him, you're not the book lover you think you are.

Related Stories:
· Frankfurt Book Fair [Official Site]
· Turkish President to Inaugurate Frankfurt Book Fair [World Bulletin]
· More Than Sausages in Frankfurt [Jaunted]

[Photo: ipa]

Tags: Toilets / Bathrooms / Rolf Potts / Books / → All Tags

The Rolf Potts Virtual Book Tour: The Cross-Cultural Ramifications of Wiping Your Ass

Long-term travel guru and po-mo hero Rolf Potts has been doing the travel blog circuit for the past week and a half, talking about travel writing, travel writing and, well, travel writing. So we put that topic aside and asked him to tell us a funny story from his new book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There. Thus this tale of pooping in India:

Chapter 5 of Marco Polo Didn't Go There is entitled "Something Approaching Enlightenment," and this story recounts a grand misadventure that transpired in the Indian Himalayas a few years ago.

By the time this tale ends, I have endured detainment by the Indian army, survived an attack by a giant mastiff dog that ripped my pants to shreds and spent a long night stuck in a town where the only place to sleep was a room occupied by three drunken, porn-obsessed Indian road engineers.

What I never included in the original story, however, is a small, tangential detail that can functionally serve as a little parable about the cross-cultural ramifications of wiping your ass.

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Tags: Design / Shopping / Books / → All Tags

Street Retail in Brooklyn: Airstream Books

There aren't many lot of street vendors in New York that we can really get excited about, as they're usually split down the middle between knockoff handbag peddlers and bootleg DVD sellers. Where's the design conscious person supposed to shop on the streets of New York?

Head across the East River to Williamsburg, and you'll find the fantastic Airstream Books. The sidewalk shop specializes in architecture, design, fashion books and, yes, vintage porn. The furniture selection is amazing as well. Good looking modern chairs, desks, couches and shelving are arranged in a sidewalk showroom--weather permitting of course.

The "store" is open weekends and evenings, and some furniture is also listed on Craigslist during the week. If you want to view the full collection of available furniture, the owner will also open up a 1,000-foot warehouse by appointment only.

Related Stories:
· Airstream Books [Official Site]
· Airstream Books (and Furniture Too!) [Apartment Therapy]
· Shopping in Brooklyn Map [Jaunted]
· Brooklyn Travel coverage [Jaunted]

Tags: Books / Travel Books / Culture Travel / → All Tags

Free Book... If You Can Find It

Next time you're in San Francisco or London, keep your eyes peeled for a small group of books stacked neatly near a park bench, news stand or on your bike seat. You can't miss them, as they have a bright yellow cover with huge block letters that read FREE BOOK.

Don't fret, it's not some Krishna BS that you'll pick up, suddenly confronted by a little man dressed in orange robes holding a bell and flowers. The book is titled Potential Energy, and it's a self-published novel by a writer named Schist.

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Tags: Armchair Travel / Recommended Travel Books / Travel Books / Books / → All Tags

Armchair Travel: Sating Your Office Wanderlust

Stuck in front of your computer today? Take a mini-break with Field-Tested Books, an essay collection in which writers talk about where they were when they read a very memorable book.

Some of our favorite folks are represented in this e-anthology, but what we love the most is that the pieces are short. You can easily pack a year's worth of long weekends into an hour or two--just make sure your boss isn't peaking over your shoulder.

Our Picks:
· Stalking an Actor in Perugia, Italy [Steven Heller]
· Forgoing Sodom and Gomorrah for Ayn Rand [Ben Karlin]
· Shocking the Other Passengers on a Cross-Country Flight [Annie Logue]
· Getting Drunk in Mexico [Andrei Codrescu]
· Armchair Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: ddsiple]

Tags: Thomas Kohnstamm / Lonely Planet / Travel Books / Books / → All Tags

Book Review: Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?

After all the sniping, faux shock and criticism, Thomas Kohnstamm's book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? is out today. Instead of rehashing old interviews and getting up on our high horse about ethics, we decided to, you know, actually read it.

We didn't get very far before stumbling across something we wish were included in that now-notorious "embassy chick" interview that upset so many people:

Author's note: For better or for worse, this book recounts true experiences. In order to distill the chaos of life down to a clear narrative, it was necessary to omit certain events, rearrange and compress chronology and combine a few of the characters.

So, yes, what you're about to read is true. Sort of.

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