Vacation - Had to Get Away

by Kimberley Allen McNamara

There’s nothing quite like a winter snow storm or a torrential downpour or tempest to make you think of escaping and traveling elsewhere. Many (particularly those in New England) dream of beaches, palm trees, and Sun. While others spend a stormy weekend planning a trip to satisfy their wanderlust or check items off their bucket list. Whatever your travel plans, most likely you will bring a book - digital or paper or both- to while away the travel time and oh, yes to maybe even to savory on that sunny beach. Once you’ve mapped out your vacation, you may actually sit down and engage in some literary travel while you wait.

One of the easiest and albeit cheapest way to travel is to pick up a book. Books hold imaginary worlds and historical and current places within their covers. Armchair travels easily abound when you have a book. Books make the commuter life tolerable. As Rory Gilmore famously stated in her high school graduation speech:  

“I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina and strolled down Swann’s Way.” - (Rory Gilmore, Gilmore Girls 2003)

But what if you want more after your book ends? What if you want to travel to many of these settings and walk in the footsteps of your favorite characters and/or authors? Where do you begin?  

When Your Reading becomes 3D:

Literary Traveler and Classical Pursuits are websites that offer tours to help the reader connect with the world of the character and that of the author.  As the sites state, their goal is give people of like interests the chance to continue the conversation about the book and author long after the book has been finished. While Classic Pursuits offers the same planned tours as referenced on Literary Traveler, they additionally also offer “Made-to-Measure” which crafts a tour for smaller groups with specific interests ie: book clubs, literature classes, alumni groups.

Of course you can also plan your own literary excursion. A quick search of the internet reveals several sites listing the top literary cities to visit. For example: National Geographic lists top literary cities. And Bustle provides a listing of places to visit if you are a book nerd. Frequently these cities or places repeat and may sometimes merge with the film versions of the books: Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Stockholm, New Zealand (Lord of the Rings) Iceland (Game of Thrones). Often the cities include an audio tour you can download to listen to as you walk along, or there are independent tours that offer themed walks and pub crawls that highlight specific authors works - you can visit the pubs of Sherlock Holmes, the cafes of Paris once inhabited by the Lost Generation writers - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein… Also in London, there are Harry Potter tours for small or large groups. Visit Platform 9 3/4s and take your picture with a luggage cart halfway stuck in the wall of the famous platform, which didn’t exist until Harry Potter fans mandated it. Or do, as a friend of mine, did in 2017, when after reading A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline, she journeyed to the Olsen homestead and the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland Maine. There she saw Andrew Wyeth’s world, the landscape of Christina’s World, and celebrated Wyeth’s 100th year. The trek was magical - the blue in Wyeth’s paintings coupled with Kline’s words re: why the blue existed at the homestead-whether in truth or imagined it mattered not. What mattered were echoes of the story’s words cast back to her as she walked the grounds. The book brought to life.

Or Reading on Location:

The other option is to pair your reading with your travel. Recently I found myself going to Paris and wanted read something set in Paris besides A Moveable Feast. Enter the website: Tripfiction.com lets you pick your book by choosing a location. Once you’ve chosen a location ie: Paris you can then further refine your location (ie: a specific neighborhood) or you can add a genre, sort by location rating,  content rating, number of reviews etc… I wound up with The Paris Wife: A Novel,  Le Divorce, The Dud Avocado, and The Piano Shop on the Left Bank. In truth, Le Divorce and The Piano Shop came via a friend’s recommendation. I had already read The Perfect Nanny but craved lighter reading for my trip to the City of Lights. Of course while in Paris, I visited Shakespeare & Company bookstore and cafe which was home to many of the Lost Generation and Librairie Galignani which was the first English bookstore on the Continent, established in 1801 and where I purchased Paris est une fête (A Movable Feast) in French. I visited museums, marveled at Monet’s waterlilies, drank hot chocolates from Angelina’s, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, practiced my high school French and even received a compliment re: my pronunciation and my correct use of the formal (Madame Stark- God rest her soul - would have been pleased). Reading on location makes the location so much more palatable and makes you notice the nuances of the culture that may otherwise blur beneath the excitement of being in the place. Reading as you visit makes the visit richer.

There are many ways to travel when the wind blows. A Book is the easiest way. And you can now easily enrich your literary experience by making it 3D when you do actually get off that sofa or out of that armchair and take that vacation.

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PS. Here’s a link to books to read in 2019 before they are translated to film and released as reported by radiotimes.com.

PPS Follow hellosunshine and reesesbookclubxhellosunshine on instagram to get an update on female storytelling -  both are dedicated to changing the narrative and founded by Reese Witherspoon.