One for the Road: Great Escapes Around the World

by Kelly Amabile on

We’re featuring several heavyweight titles this week. First it was a 600-pager from Rough Guides, and now TASCHEN gets heftier with a 720-page look at Great Escapes Around the World. This new release from the stylish German publisher features a top-notch collection of accommodations hand-picked by design diva Angelika Taschen. Previous Great Escape Hotel guides from Taschen have each focused on a different continent, but this latest one combines them all.

From Kerala to Sorrento to the Napa Valley, Great Escapes takes readers on a visual tour of luxurious guesthouses, ecolodges, spas, ranches, houseboats and hotels of all kinds. Glossy photos of private beaches and lush hideaways whisper wanderlust nothings in our ears. It’s an eclectic mix that’s sure to leave folks daydreaming for beds far beyond their own.

One for the Road: Make the Most of Your Time on Earth

by Kelly Amabile on

There are books that suggest what you should see before you die. And others that offer up vacation ideas that will enrich your life. Rough Guides takes a different approach with their just released mega list of 1000 Ultimate Travel Experiences. Their challenge to each of us — Make the Most of Your Time on Earth. Simple, right? They label these 1,000 activities as must-do, but with an invitation than I find much more appealing than “Hurry up and visit all these touristy locations before you croak!”

This massive Rough Guide to the World includes all 625 experiences previously released in the 25 Ultimate Experience mini-guides (which we reviewed when we interviewed Rough Guide founder Mark Ellingham in May), plus an additional 375 new experiences. From punting on the river Cam in Cambridge to voyaging into the unknown of Antarctica, Rough Guides presents travelers with adventures that appeal to all types. The book is loaded with inspirational photographs and descriptions. It’s meant to be thumbed through again and again — for daydreaming sessions when stuck at home, or as a prompt to get going with actual travel planning. This fantastic collection is a must have for anyone who experiences frequent bouts of wanderlust. Just one flip through the 600-color pages will leave you motivated to get moving…somewhere! Do you need more proof that no shortage of possibilities exists!?!

Literature via Cell Phones

by Neil Woodburn on

In the mad rush to load up our smart phones with tiny video and entertaining games, there remains one form of media sorely lacking in today’s modernized world: literature.

Remember passing time on a plane or waiting for the subway with a magazine or book in hand? Such gray matter activities are sadly becoming increasingly scarce these days. Just look around the next time you fly. The majority of passengers will be plugged into their MP3 players, personal DVD players, or engrossed in the latest game on their new iPhone. Reading is nearly dead.

And so, it was with a sigh of relief that I came across a small company combining the best of both worlds.

DailyLit.com delivers short snippets of literature to your cell phone screen, PDA, or email inbox to be consumed at your leisure. The idea is that entire books are serialized into consecutive snippets–each of which can be read in about five minutes. All one needs to do is to pick a book, decided upon how often you want the snippets to come, and then read the entire thing five minutes at a time.

Sure beats Donkey Kong in my book!

Conde Nast Traveler Rates Books for (Armchair) Adventurers

by Catherine Bodry on

The September issue of Conde Nast Traveler offers a list of literature that will hopefully whet your adventure appetite. The magazine is touting the list of books due out this fall as “new classics,” although it includes Jack Kerouac’s re-released On the Road (original scroll in book form).

You don’t have to get seasick to follow Marco Polo’s explorations or tales of a Viking woman who “sailed the seas 500 years before Columbus.”

For more great travel literature, check out Gadling blogger Kelly Amabile’s One for the Road series. Grab a blanket, make a cup of tea, and travel away in your mind.

[via USA Today]

One for the Road – China: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

by Kelly Amabile on

As a sidebar to this month’s Chinese Buffet series, throughout August, One for the Road will highlight travel guides, reference books and other recommended reads related to life or travel in China.

Did I mention that I read an entire book while on the train from Beijing to Shanghai? While browsing at the Foreign Language Bookstore on Wangfujing Dajie in Beijing, I came across a copy of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Since my backpack was already overloaded with guidebooks, I really had no business buying another book, but this tiny paperback was whispering to me. After I learned that the plot revolved around a secret trunk of forbidden books, I knew I had to have it.

The tale begins in the summer of 1968, when two boys, both sons of doctors, are sent to a “re-education camp” during the height of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The story revolves around their friendship, the beautiful little seamstress and a mysterious collection of Western classics, hidden in a suitcase in the home of their friend “Four Eyes”. Anyone with a passion for literature will probably find this historical novel to be a quick and enjoyable read. (It’s perfect reading material for an all day train trip through China too!) Written by Dai Sijie, a Chinese filmmaker who has lived in France since 1984, a movie version of the book opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.