Archive for the 'Book Reviews' Category
Interview with author of ‘Angels & Demons’ locations travel guide to Rome
May 15, 2009 1:40pm
Angela K. Nickerson, author of “A Journey Into Michelangelo’s Rome,” has written a free insider’s travel guide to the locations featured in “Angel & Demons.” Just to make sure you didn’t miss it, I said free. As in all 43 pages of it. “Rome’s Angels & Demons: The Insider’s Guide” offers great back-story to the historical characters that Dan Brown uses in his novel and at the same time offers practical travel information for visitors to Rome who want to see the sights for themselves. Here is a Q&A with Angela as she tells us more about why the book is so handy for travelers and how you can use her book to go on a self-guided tour of Rome, hitting the same locations you saw in the movie.
Jen: Angela – truly amazing of you and Roaring Forties Press to offer this guide for free. I would’ve thought you could’ve made a bunch of money off this. Can you give us some back story on how the guide got started?
Angela: Well, personally I love to go to the places I’ve read about or seen in movies. There’s something about living out that fantasy when you are traveling which is thrilling. Roaring Forties Press published my first book, “A Journey Into Michelangelo’s Rome.” They are interested in books that examine the intersections between art and travel. When I approached them with a guide to Rome and the sites in “Angels & Demons,” it fit both their ideology and their business model. So we are using this as a test product. If it goes well, hopefully we will make “a bunch of money” off of future titles!
For those of us who haven’t read the book yet, can you give us a quick primer on the characters in the book and movie so we’re not lost in your guide?
Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons” actually was published before “The DaVinci Code.” Read the rest of this entry »
12 books of Christmas: ‘Odysseys and Photographs’
December 23, 2008 6:00am
![Odysseys and Photographs: Four \](http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/photos.jpg "Odysseys and Photographs: Four \")
I am completely in love … with Albert Schweitzer.
How could you not be after looking at his photograph in “Odyssey and Photographs: Four National Geographic Field Men — Maynard Owen Williams, Volkmar Wentzel, Luis Marden, Thomas Abercrombie (National Geographic, $40)?
If you look at the picture that Wentzel shot of Schweitzer, the medical missionary in Africa, you see what Wentzel meant about the doctor’s “reverence for life” as two kittens make themselves at home on his cluttered desk.
12 books of Christmas: ‘John Muir’s Botanical Legacy’
December 21, 2008 4:00pm
Most coffee table books let the photos do the heavy lifting.
Not so “Nature’s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir’s Botanical Legacy,” by Bonnie J. Gisel, with images by Stephen J. Joseph and foreword by David Rains Wallace (Heyday Books, $45).
Don’t misunderstand: It is beautifully illustrated with the species that Muir catalogued on his numerous journeys. (The book is divided into sections: “From Scotland to Wisconsin,” “Canada and Indianapolis,” “Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico,” “California” and “Alaska.”)
Travel bookshelf: a top-flight new guide for L.A. locals
December 12, 2008 4:49pm
![A guidebook for locals](http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/cover-angle.jpg "Cover, \")
![A detail-rich L.A. guidebook](http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/foxbookcover.jpg "Inside \")
Nobody asked me, but I have a gift recommendation for everybody who thinks they know Los Angeles well.
It’s a new guidebook: “Los Angeles Attractions,” by Borislav Stanic (Museon Publishing, $24.95).
Don’t let the drab title deceive you.
Since it landed on my desk some weeks ago, I’ve been dipping into this 512-page first edition, looking for flaws. But the time has come to acknowledge that this book, published this year, is a gem, jam-packed with photos (1,770 of them) and maps (40) and details that reach beyond the usual guidebook fare.
‘Staycate’ with Los Angeles guidebooks, on sale at Traveler’s Bookcase
November 21, 2008 12:06pm
When the concept of a “staycation” hit the travel world a while back, not everybody was on board. After all, how could a trip where you don’t actually go anywhere measure up to a venture abroad, or at least out of Dodge? As much as I toss around that “staycate” word in jest occasionally, I’ve become a fan of the concept. After all, Los Angeles is no Dodge City, and with a little motivation, we can build an exciting day-trip itinerary in our area that could compete with action-packed tourist checklists in major cities elsewhere.
If you’re ready to explore Los Angeles, whether on a sightseeing tour or do-it-yourself style, what’s your first task? Well, if you’re going to treat this as a real trip, you need a guidebook. And Traveler’s Bookcase (8375 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles), our city’s very own travel-books mecca, is eager to offer up resources. Read the rest of this entry »
Author Michael Crichton wrote about traveling too
November 5, 2008 12:11pm
Author Michael Crichton, whose death at 66 was announced today, undoubtedly will best be remembered for his blockbuster books-turned-movies “Jurassic Park” and “The Andromeda Strain,” but for me it’s his real-life “Travels” (1988) that made me appreciate this gifted writer.
His insights in this book resonated with me:
“For many years I traveled for myself alone. I refused to write about my trips, or even to plan them with any useful purpose. … I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have. Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts and information structures of all sorts, that it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these structures….”
Read the rest of this entry »
National parks lodges: Can you find the inspiration for “The Shining” here?
November 3, 2008 4:20pm
As if, in this economy, you didn’t have enough reasons to feel grumpy about staying home to save money, now comes “Great Lodges of the National Parks, Volume Two” (Graphic Arts Press, $35) to a coffee table near you.
In these pages, behold Death Valley’s Furnace Creek Inn, Hawaii’s Volcano House, Alaska’s Camp Denali and seven other memorable outdoorsy lodgings, all west of Denver, in historic black-and-white and contemporary color.
The author is Christine Barnes, who has produced three other volumes on memorable lodges of North America, with considerable help from photographers Fred Pflughoft and David Morris. The book is companion to an ongoing PBS series on park lodges. (Four of the photos from the book are in this post. As the fine print reveals, two of the 10 lodgings in the book are actually sites in Oregon national forests, not national parks.) Read the rest of this entry »
SATW 2008 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism award winners
October 20, 2008 5:07pm
Congrats to all the winners of the 2008 Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition!
We’re happy for our friends and colleagues — and (ahem) thrilled that the Los Angeles Times Travel section was recognized too. Winner Catharine Hamm, L.A. Times Travel editor, eloquently described the awards as “our Pulitzer.”
Scanning the list to see who’s hot is cool, but reading the actual work that won gold is even more rewarding so we’ve linked you up to many of the individual gold medal winners below. Here are the judges’ comments on their 2008 selections and the full list of runner-up and honorable mention winners.
[Note to winners: If your award-winning material is online and we've missed your link, please let us know in the Comment section after the jump. Where we could not find the original story, we've linked to the publication's homepage.]
Grand award — Lowell Thomas travel journalist of the year
Christopher P. Baker, freelance writer-photographer
Newspaper travel sections
- Newspapers with 500,000 or more circulation
Los Angeles Times, Catharine Hamm, Travel editor
- Newspapers with 350,000 to 499,999 circulation
The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Karan Smith and Julie Traves, Travel editors
- Newspapers with up to 350,000 circulation
The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Millie Ball, Travel editor
Magazines
- Travel magazines
National Geographic Adventure, John Rasmus, editor in chief
- Travel coverage in other magazines
Brides Magazine, Sherri Eisenberg, senior travel editor
Newspaper article on U.S./Canada travel
Jane Roy Brown, “After Alice’s Restaurants,” the Boston Globe
Magazine article on U.S./Canada travel
James Vlahos, “The Arch Hunters,” National Geographic Adventure
Newspaper article on foreign travel
William Ecenbarger, “A Small Ship in a Big Jungle,” Chicago Tribune Read the rest of this entry »
A conversation with Paul Theroux about the ‘Eastern Star’
October 16, 2008 4:40pm
Perhaps the most popular words to describe Paul Theroux are “curmudgeonly” and “cranky,” but on Wednesday night at the Los Angeles Public Library, the inveterate traveler was in fine form.
His appearance, courtesy of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles in its marvelous Aloud public lecture series, organized by Louise Steinman, confirmed that the best travel writers are really journalists at heart, and Theroux’s sprawling and engrossing tome “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” — the point of the evening’s discussion — proves what a terrific journalist and storyteller Theroux is.
Before a full house, Theroux had the somewhat difficult task of segueing from a live airing of the final presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, but he handled it with appropriate wit and an occasionally thinly veiled aside on the current state of American politics.
Read the rest of this entry »
Travel feats and more in Guinness Book of World Records 2009
September 21, 2008 3:02pm
Last week, the Guinness Book of World Records 2009 was released, and not only are its accounts of record-breaking feats more bizarre than ever, but this year’s edition also comes with a pair of 3-D glasses for viewing some of the book’s images (if you thought a picture of one of the world’s hairiest men might be startling enough, you should see him stereoscopically). In addition, throughout the 2009 edition are newly introduced categories, including some in the travel-related “Spirit of Adventure” chapters.
A few of the newbies have an eco slant, such as “fastest transatlantic crossing made by solar power,” which is 29 days by a European crew, and “farthest drive by car using alternative fuel,” which is 23,697 miles by Germans in a natural gas-powered VW Caddy EcoFuel. Read the rest of this entry »
