From memoirs and maps to beautiful hard-covers suitable for coffee-table display, here are some ideas for holiday gifts from this year鈥檚 crop of travel books and publications. (Prices shown are cover list prices.)
National Geographic鈥檚 World鈥檚 Best Travel Experiences ($40) looks at wild places, urban spaces, man-made wonders and other extraordinary destinations, from beach paradises to religious pilgrimage sites. There鈥檚 even a list of best places for dance lessons, whether you want to hula in Hawaii or tango in Argentina. The book also includes reminiscences from well-known writers like Bill Bryson and Anna Quindlen.
From Lonely Planet, Great Adventures ($40) offers inspiration for hikes, dives, biking, climbs, and drives, plus animal adventures like tracking mountain gorillas in Uganda and washing elephants in Thailand; winter trips from ice-trekking an Argentine glacier to dog-sledding the Yukon; and trips by water, in canoes, kayaks, sailboats, rafts and other conveyances.
Also from Lonely Planet, Food Lover鈥檚 Guide to the World ($40) offers food history, recipes and recommendations for where to eat, from a Bangkok vendor of noodle dishes, Yen Ta Fo JC, to tips for cooking mofongo, a combination of plantains and pork rinds popular in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Travel writers Don George, an editor at large for National Geographic Traveler magazine, and Pauline Frommer, creator of Pauline Frommer Guidebooks, both said travel books they鈥檝e recently enjoyed include actor Andrew McCarthy鈥檚 memoir, The Longest Way Home (Free Press, $26). Frommer said the book has 鈥渢he same wary, watchful charm鈥� that McCarthy displays as an actor.
McCarthy made his name in Brat Pack movies like St. Elmo鈥檚 Fire and Pretty in Pink.
Frommer says she also enjoyed the 鈥渂ehind-the-scenes hijinx of Heads in Beds,鈥� by Jacob Tomsky (Doubleday, $26), a funny insider鈥檚 memoir of the world of high-end hotels, along with Wild, by Cheryl Strayed (Knopf, $26), a memoir of a grueling 1,770-kilometre hike on the Pacific Crest Trail that helped the writer put her life together. Frommer said the book gave her a 鈥漜athartic cry or three.鈥�
Other recommendations from George include Among the Islands by Tim Flannery, about his adventures researching animals of the Pacific islands (Penguin, $25) and The Black Rhinos of Namibia (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25) in which writer Rick Bass recounts his experiences tracking animals in Africa with conservationists.
George himself is out with a new anthology of travel stories he edited called Better Than Fiction (Lonely Planet, $16) featuring work by Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Matthiessen, Kurt Andersen and others.
Travel bookstores have fallen on hard times with the rise of digital travel content and online book sales, but the Globe Corner bookstore, which closed its Harvard Square location in 2011, has gotten a second life as the Globe Corner Travel Annex at Brookline Booksmith, an independent store in Brookline, Massachusetts. The store has a travel section in its online holiday gift guide at brooklinebooksmith. com/gifts2012/travel.html .
Gift suggestions from Globe Corner manager Jodie Vinson include The Travels of Marco Polo (Sterling Signature, $40) which Vinson describes as a 鈥渟tunning new illustrated version of the classic travel text, complete with over 200 paintings, maps, illuminated manuscripts, and photographs鈥� and Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens (Tara Books, $16).
鈥淚t can be surprising how many of our favourite novelists were travel writers as well,鈥� said Vinson.
Vinson also offers an unusual idea for a stocking-stuffer: Crumpled City Maps, $20, available for three dozen international cities.
鈥淭hese maps will fit snugly in the toe of any stocking and you don鈥檛 have to worry about messing up the creases!鈥� she said, noting that the maps are waterproof and made from paper that is designed to be stuffed in your pocket.
Finally, for a traveller with the right sense of humour, Gross America: Your Coast-to-Coast Guide to All Things Gross, by Richard Faulk (Tarcher/Penguin, $14) offers quirky destinations like a walk-through model of human intestines in Houston and the preserved brains at Philadelphia鈥檚 Mutter Museum.
