Literate Travel

I’ve just come back from a trip to New York, where I noticed that several bookstores offered tables loaded with books about or featuring the Big Apple. The titles might range from the latest subway guide to “The New York Stories of Henry James.”

This set me to thinking about books and places. My late colleague, Nina King, the former editor of Book World once edited a volume called “Crime of the Scene.” Each chapter was devoted to a different country or region and offered a bibliographical essay about mysteries and detective stories set in that particular place. Crime novels, it was assumed, were filled with local color or details about life in sometimes exotic places and thus the reader was taught a great deal about the culture of Venice or Bangkok, Australia or Scandinavia.

When you travel, do you try to read books set in the cities or countries you’ll be visiting? Do you stock up on histories or regional mysteries, or do you stick with the standard travel guides? In thinking back over your trips, were there any particular books that really illuminated that visit to Paris or Peru?  Do you have a favorite travel-guide series? I remember reading, with much pleasure, David Piper’s “Companion Guide to London”?  Not least, I’ll be visiting Kansas City, Seattle, Portland and Denver during the week of November 13—in the hopes of selling a few copies of my just published, “On Conan Doyle”—and I’d welcome suggestions of favorite books about or set in these cities. Please share your thoughts.
— Michael Dirda