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Armchair Travel April 2019
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| A Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light by John BaxterWhat it is: a seasonal look at life in Paris along with a bit of history, by a prolific Australian author who's lived in the City of Light for decades.
Who it's for: those who want an insider's look at what the famed city is like each month of the year.
Reviewers say: "a quirky, affectionate portrait by an unabashed Francophile" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| In Putin's Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time... by Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey TaylerWhat happened: Two writers traveled across Russia, visiting with locals and pondering how Russia's vastness and history has helped shape its national identity and culture.
Did you know? Russian American author Nina Khrushcheva is the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
For fans of: Lisa Dickey's Bears in the Streets, David Green's Midnight in Siberia, and other looks at lesser-known parts of Russia by astute travelers. |
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| See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy by Frances MayesWhat it is: an evocative, recipe-complemented travelogue through 13 regions of Italy by the bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun, who's often joined by her husband and her teenage grandson as she eats sumptuous meals in lovely locales.
Read this next: for more books that detail the good eats and fascinating sights in the off-the-beaten-path parts of Italy, pick up Elizabeth Helman Minchilli's Eating My Way Through Italy (also with recipes) or Matt Goulding's Pasta, Pane, Vino (which includes many color photos). |
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| Off the Rails: A Train Trip through Life by Beppe SevergniniWhat it is: a delightful, often wryly humorous journey with Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini (author of Ciao, America!), who shares a collection of travel stories focused on railway trips.
Trips include: his 1986 honeymoon on the Trans-Siberian railway, a trip across the Untied States with his teenage son, a railway journey across Australia, and various travels with a German journalist where they discussed their countries' different mindsets regarding travel.
For fans of: train travelogues like Tom Zoellner's Train, Tim Park's Italian Ways, or Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. |
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Better than Fiction : True Travel Tales from Great Fiction Writers
by Alexander McCall Smith
What it is: A collection of original travel stories told by some of the world's best novelists. Exhilaratingly varied in place, plot, and voice, these tales all manifest a passion for the precious gifts that travel confers, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places to the truths it reveals about ourselves.
Featuring stories from: Isabel Allende, Peter Matthiessen, Alexander McCall Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Tea Obreht and DBC Pierre.
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The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love
by Per J. Andersson
Who is that man? Pradyumna Kumar, known as PK, was born into a poor, untouchable family in a small village in eastern India. One evening, while drawing portraits in a park, he meets a young Swedish woman, Lotta von Schendin — and this brief meeting will change the courses of their lives forever.
What it is: This is the remarkable true story of how a young Indian man armed with nothing more than a handful of paintbrushes and a secondhand Raleigh bicycle made his way across Asia and Europe in search of the woman he loves.
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| Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City by Anna QuindlenWhat it's about: Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author Anna Quindlen takes readers on an entertaining tour of London, following in the footsteps of favorite fictional characters and their creators.
Did you know? Quindlen has been an Anglophile since she was a child reading books set in England, but it wasn't until she was in her 40s that she actually visited London in person.
Reviewers say: "Quindlen presents a smart, bookish, wry, and stimulating portrait of the most literary of cities" (Booklist). |
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| Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World by Nell StevensWhat happened: After finishing her MFA, British writer Nell Stevens won a fellowship allowing her to go anywhere for several months to write.
So, Paris or Fiji, right? Nope, Bleaker Island, a part of the Falkland Islands, located off the Patagonian coast of South America, that features inhospitable wind, lots of snow, and not many people.
Okay, why? She wanted distraction-free writing -- but discovered that three months of solitude in an isolated place provides its own challenges. |
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