The first thing I did after booking my flight to Chicago (after researching the best place to get deep dish pizza) was to find a book about the literary places to visit in the Windy City. Chicago is, after all, a city that has nurtured writers for more than a century.

Some of those writers include:

• Ernest Hemingway
• Saul Bellow
• Carl Sandburg
• L. Frank Baum
• Edgar Rice Burroughs

The book I ended up buying was Greg Holden’s Literary Chicago: A Book Lover’s Tour of the Windy City.

The thing I really like about this book is that Greg Holden seems to understand that for those of us who love literature and writing, literary landmarks such as where a particular author was born or where a specific book was written are unbelievably inspiring. I’ve traveled far out of the way of the more popular tourist attractions to see a site that has inspired a writer whom I admire. If you can relate, and if you’re heading to Chicago, this is the perfect book for you.

My trip only lasted three days so I didn’t have time to see everything I would have liked. For example, I really wanted to see Oz Park, which was named to commemorate the work of L. Frank Baum who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz while living in Chicago in 1900. I would’ve loved the statues of the characters, not to mention the yellow brick road.
I did manage to spend an afternoon surrounded by all things Ernest Hemingway, which I’ll write about in a separate post. But between visiting The Art Institute of Chicago, taking a Chicago River Architecture Tour, and going out to listen to some blues, I didn’t get to see all the spots on my list.
But all that means is that I need to go back, and there are worse things than having to pay another visit to Chicago.

Related posts:
Literary Paris: A Guide (and a review)
The Writers of Harvard

I came across the website BiblioTravel while researching a previous post, and since I found it extremely useful and the internet is all about sharing useful information (in addition to the cat videos), I thought I’d share it with you here.

BiblioTravel is a free online resource for identifying books set in distinct locales. Perfect for those of us who like to learn more about a place we’ve been or are planning to go to by reading about it in a book.

The website has 3834 books and 1847 locales, with New York City at the top of the list of most books per locale. You can search by place or by book to find what you’re looking for. And if it doesn’t already exist on the site you can add it (here are the guidelines).

As an example, if you’re looking for a Young Adult book set in Venice, you’ll be pointed in the direction of For the Love of Venice by Donna Jo Napoli. Or how about a Children’s book set in South America. A Bicycle for Rosaura by Daniel Barbot is set in a small town in Venezuela.

I looked up Toronto and was amazed to discover over a hundred books set in my hometown. Sometimes it can be just as nice to read books set in your own backyard as it is to read books set in far off destinations.

“I was bombarded with self-indulgent whining and a lot of religion that didn’t feel universal enough to be empathized with at all.”

“If I had it to do over again, I’d spend my money on another book.”

“…I was annoyed at her whiny, martyr-like tone.”

Those are all reviews I found on Amazon for the book A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love & Faith by Lori Smith.
I hadn’t read any of those reviews before I picked up the book from my local library. The only thing I had read was the blurb on the back of the book that promised readers they would travel through “landscapes Jane knew and loved-from Bath and Lyme, to London and the Hampshire countryside…”.

But by about page 30 I knew this book wasn’t going to give me what I was looking for. It wasn’t going to live up to that blurb promise.
Instead, it became clear that I would spend the next couple hundred pages learning about the author, not about Jane Austen and her life in England. It was around that time that I realized I wasn’t all that interested in the author and her quest to find a good man. And it was when Lori Smith declared “Christian guys beyond a certain age are weird” that I realized this book just wasn’t for me.

If you still want to read this book, please don’t be put off by this review or any of the others on Amazon. Many people had positive things to say about it, and part of me feels a bit guilty for not giving it a few more pages before returning it to the library. Maybe I would have started to care about Lori’s journey a bit more. And then again, maybe not.

I am, however, still interested in reading Lori Smith’s upcoming book, The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman. And I’m still searching for a travel book for Jane Austen’s England, so if you’ve read any good ones please let me know.

Related posts:
The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Book Review
Lunch in Paris: A Book Review 

 ”They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun; their youth was striking. Everyone wanted to meet him”.
- Dorothy Parker 

When F. Scott Fitzgerald met and fell in love with Zelda, he was not yet rich or successful.
It has been said that Zelda broke off their engagement because she was tired of waiting for him to make his fortune, and that she only agreed to marry him after he’d established himself as a real writer when his book This Side of Paradise was published. A week after it was published, to be exact.
Regardless of what you think of all that, any Fitzgerald fan knows how much of an influence she had on his writing. In fact, he sometimes had his heroines say her exact words in his books.
As one of the most well-known couples in literature, I didn’t miss the opportunity to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral the last time I was in New York. It was there that Fitzgerald and Zelda were married in a small ceremony on April 3, 1920.
This stunning church on Fifth Avenue, the largest Gothic-style Catholic cathedral in the US, was where it all started. And it was only four years after that they were living in France as Fitzgerald worked on The Great Gatsby.
As I stood inside I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if she had never agreed to marry him…

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New York Public Library
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It seems like every time I go on Amazon there are a bunch of new literary travel books for me to buy.
Here are just a few of the new literary travel books I’ll be picking up in 2012:

All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey with Jane
by Amy Smith
June 2012

Armed with only a suitcase and dozens of copies of Austen’s novels, professor Amy Elizabeth Smith took to the road and organized book clubs in six different Central and South American countries. Along the way, she battled through a life-threatening illness, discovered friendship and love, and learned more about life-and the power of Austen-than she ever could have imagined. All Roads Lead to Austen celebrates the wisdom of letting go and becoming, no matter what our age.

Walking with the Brontes in West Yorkshire
by Norman and June Buckley
May 2012

In the style of Walking with Beatrix Potter and Walking with Wordsworth, Walking with the Brontës is a pocket-sized book containing fifteen walking routes, predominantly in West Yorkshire. Each walk is to somewhere associated with one or more of the Brontë family, either in real life or with important characters or places in their novels: for instance the house on which Emily based Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights, or the countryside around Cowan Bridge School which, with its harsh regime, caused the Brontë girls much suffering and became Lowood School in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre.

A Pocket Guide to Dickens’ London
by Daniel Tyler
May 2012

Related posts:
The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Book Review
Literary Paris: A Guide (and a review)

John Steinbeck, who grew up in Salinas in the 1900s, wrote a novel about a street lined with sardine canneries in Monterey, California. He called that street and the book Cannery Row, but it was based on the actual street called Ocean View Avenue. Later (about 13 years after the book was published), that street was renamed Cannery Row in honour of the book. And today when you walk the quiet street, there is evidence of how proud residents are of Steinbeck and of the famous novel he chose to set there.

There are quotes from the novel everywhere, along with artistic interpretations of the book. Edward Ricketts was a marine biologist that Steinbeck used as the inspiration for his marine researcher character Doc Ricketts, and at 800 Cannery Row you can see Ed Ricketts’ actual lab, which was the basis for Doc’s marine lab in the novel.

Steinbeck called Cannery Row “a poem…a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”
If you’re a fan of the book or of Steinbeck in general, it’s worth the trip to beautiful Monterey to see Cannery Row. And if you’re in the area, you can also check out the National Steinbeck Center and The Steinbeck House , both in Salinas.

This region of the California Coast isn’t just Steinbeck country. Many other authors have roots there:

• Robert Louis Stevenson visited Monterey in 1879 and legend has it that the setting for his classic novel Treasure Island was inspired by Point Lobos in nearby Carmel.
• Henry Miller lived in Big Sur, and his home is now the Henry Miller Memorial Library, which is right off of Highway 1.
• Jack Kerouac also spent some time in Big Sur in 1960. He wrote the autobiographical novel Big Sur based on his experiences there.

One of the things I vow to do on my return to Paris is to spend more time at cafés. During my last visit, I may have been too committed to seeing stuff and doing things to truly appreciate that the café life in Paris is just as important as any of the tourist attractions I was lining up for.
It’s such a simple joy to sit, contemplate, and observe while sipping an espresso and maybe nibbling on something sweet.

Since I’m trying to go back to Paris this year, I decided to arm myself with the book Literary Cafés of Paris by Noel Riley Fitch. It’s the perfect little travel guide to bring along on your trip or to read at home before you go. The literary cafés are broken down by area, so you can visit them all if you’re in Paris for a while, or just spend the day hopping from one place to another in a more concentrated area such as the Right Bank.

A café that I did make time to visit was Café de Flore on Boulevard St-Germain. I couldn’t resist the Art Deco decor and its artistic and literary history. Picasso frequented Café de Flore in the 30s and 40s, along with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir who wrote there every day.

On my visit, I chose to sit outside at a small table so I could watch the people walking by. I had been instructed by a friend to order their Chocolat Chaud because it is “the best hot chocolate in the world”. I did and I wasn’t disappointed. It was like drinking melted chocolate only better because you add some heavy cream to it. And despite its history, it didn’t feel too touristy to me. I could have stayed there for the entire afternoon. Next time I’ll order a second Chocolat Chaud and do just that.

If you’re interested, here’s a great article on Café life in Paris.

Café de Flore
172 Boulevard Saint-Germain
http://www.cafedeflore.fr

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“I am Eloise. I am six. I am a city child. I live at the Plaza.”

As a kid reading Kay Thompson’s book Eloise, I would have never imagined that one day I’d have the opportunity to stay at The Plaza. But, unbelievably, I did stay at this literary landmark a few years ago. And while I didn’t exactly have my run of the place like Miss Eloise, I did manage to have a pretty good time.

I’ll never forget my first ride in the elevator. I felt so out of place in the grand hotel because, unlike Eloise, my mother does not have a charge account at Bergdorfs and she has never known Coco Chanel. I opted for a late night drink at the Oak Bar, but for a real Eloise experience you should have tea at The Palm Court. Also, don’t forget to order something from room service, saying “Charge it, please.”

If you’d like a detailed Eloise itinerary for you and your kids, pick up Storybook Travels or have a look at The Plaza’s own Eloise Guides. And if the Eloise Shop in the hotel isn’t enough for you, there’s always this package that lets you live like Eloise for the night.

If you’ve never read this classic children’s book, what are you waiting for? And if you’d like to learn more about how author Kay Thompson came up with and published the story of Eloise in 1955, here is the complete Eloise Timeline.

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When Charles Dickens visited Canada during his 1842 tour he didn’t stay in Toronto for very long. In fact, he only stayed two days before moving on to Montreal. Since Toronto is my hometown, I wish he had stayed longer so that the observations he made about my city would’ve been a little more exciting. Instead they make Toronto seem sort of dull, which I assure you it is not:
“…the town itself is full of life and motion, bustle, business, and improvement. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas…” Dickens also made mention of a “good stone prison” and the footways that were “kept in very good and clean repair.” Pretty boring, right?

Luckily, when I watched the DVD series Dickens in America, the bit about Toronto focused on something a bit more interesting than the condition of its streets.
In the Toronto episode, host Miriam Margolyes visits collector Dan Calinescu who has over 5000 Dickens items in his tiny Toronto apartment. That makes his one of the largest private Dickens collection in the world.
She is, of course, very jealous of his collection, and you’ll understand why after you watch the episode. It’s incredibly impressive.

If you’re looking for a Dickens-themed afternoon in Toronto, A Taste of the World offers a tour called In The Footsteps of Charles Dickens, where guide Shirley Lum will take you and your group out to see the Toronto that Dickens would have seen in 1842. Clean footways and all.

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Dickens in America 

When I pulled up to the Drumcliffe Churchyard I expected to see tour buses and lots of tourists buzzing around taking pictures. I had been accustomed to that on my trip to Ireland. But instead I was alone in the cemetery. Alone with W.B. Yeats.

Yeats, one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, was award the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. (You can read his banquet speech here.) He died in 1939 in France but was later moved to Sligo, Ireland, because that’s what he wanted. While planning my trip to Ireland I knew I would have to make a stop at his grave. And when I arrived and stood there with Ben Bulben in the distance, the dark gray clouds overhead, and nothing but the sound of the wind in the grass, I understood why he would have wanted to be buried there. It was peaceful and absolutely beautiful.

The epitaph on his gravestone is from his poem, “Under Ben Bulben”.

If you’re a fan of Yeats and are planning a trip to Ireland, make sure to visit the Dublin Writers Museum. They have some amazing items on display and, from what I remember, a pretty great bookshop as well.

For more information on visiting Sligo and the Drumcliffe Churchyard, visit DiscoverIreland.ie.

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The Writers of Père Lachaise 

Literary Paris: A Guide (and a review)