- A nice idea of highlighting literary connections with various travel destinations that unfortunately doesn’t quite work. But I think this book’s failure is more down to its design and layout than it’s content. It falls between two stools and ends up as neither a literary overview nor a practical travel guide. By organizing the content by genres and jumping from author to author with no clear delineation the information soon blends together. I ended up cherry picking entries by searching for authors in the index. Talking of indexes the book desperately needed a dedicated index of locations mentioned to aid any travel planning with a literary twist. I was hoping that this could be the book to help me figure out a few fun places to visit the next time I’m in New York for a few days, or on a future trip back to the UK. The frustration is that the information is all in there, it’s just not presented in a useful way. ( )

I enjoyed sampling the entries from this book, but it wasn't particularly useful when I went to use it to plan some literary adventures. The layout stymied me when I approached the book from a planning standpoint. I felt like I had to search around quite a bit to find what I was looking for, both when looking for everything for one author and for everything in one geographical region. I wanted to be able to say, "I'm in New England; what can I do that's literary?" but it didn't work that way for me. (It's possible this was due to user error.) I also could have used a book more centered on North America because that's where I am and that's where I plan most (or, so far, all) of my road trips. I liked reading about the destinations in the UK, but having never been there and having no immediate plans to go there, it was difficult to envision the locations.

I do plan to pick this one up again as my kids get older and they and I plan trips together. Or at least I hope that's what will happen. My kids and I all love to read, and the whole family loves road trips; literary road trips seem like a logical outcome of all of this reading/road-tripping love, but it's possible I'm not taking into account the feelings of pre-teens and teens about traveling with their mom. ( )

Fun bedside book for those nights when I just want something short and light. It has short descriptions of the homes of famous authors as well as other places nearby. ( )

This is a wonderful travel guide which provides factual and anedoctal info about writers, their homes around the world, and annual literary celebrations in their honor. There are a few small photos placed next to the names of the homes.

Also an excellent resource to learn about favorite authors' backgrounds without making the trip. ( )

There is a lot of information here. It's an encyclopedia of literary travel spots for about a dozen famous writers. Then, there is information about festivals celebrating individual authors or books in general, libraries, hotels, and pubs authors used in books and/or visited as regulars. Great for daydreaming about retirement road trips. I don't believe the information is extant as I noticed some lesser known museums missing, but it's got a lot of information in a relatively small number of pages. It's definitely worth keeping as a reference if you like literary-related travel. ( )