Several unique travel guides have added considerable color to the now overflowing travel bookshelf.
“Sleeping With Literary Lions: The Booklover’s Guide to Bed and Breakfasts” by Peggy van Hulsteyn (Fulcrum; $16.95) is a guide to more than 150 bed-and-breakfasts across the U.S. located near literary landmarks or with some kind of link to literature.
Van Hulsteyn provides a brief description of each landmark, organized by state. For example, the Seven Gables Inn in Pacific Grove, Calif., resembles Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Mass., and has a Hawthorne Room, a Robert Louis Stevenson Room and a John Steinbeck Room. The rooms in Papa’s Hideaway in Key West, Fla., are based on themes in Hemingway’s novels. Also in Key West is the rather unwieldy named Authors of Key West Guest House, a lodging that consists of nine rooms and cottages dedicated to literary figures who at some time lived in the community (such as Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and others). Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., is, according to the author, America’s oldest operating inn and the spot where poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spent many an autumn evening.
Closer to home are the period furniture and restored mosaic and marble floors of the Write Inn in Oak Park; the Book Inn B&B in South Bend, Ind.; and the Canterbury Booksellers Coffee House and Inn in Madison, Wis. Each of the six rooms of the latter features a mural from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.”
Edge of the World
For those who seek truly out-of-the-way locales, “Antarctica, the Falklands and South Georgia” by Sara Wheeler (Cadogan; $19.95) offers a penetrating look, complete with many color photos, at a part of the world few people know much about. Wheeler spent nearly a year in the area researching the guide. She explains the best way of getting there, relates how to survive in a place where the temperature can dip to 80 below zero and describes area sights, including the hut where Capt. Robert F. Scott spent his last days. There is information on geography and climate, wildlife and history. Also addressed: how to take the best photographs under the severest of weather conditions.
