AP Features, December 3rd, 2007
Three new travel books offer interesting perspectives on destinations and their connections to theater and literature.
Theater buffs coming to New York to take in a show following the resolution of the stagehands' strike may also want to check out a guidebook that takes you beyond Times Square and behind the legends of Broadway. "New York Theater Walks: Seven Historical Tours from Times Square to Greenwich Village and Beyond" (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, $16.95) by Howard Kissel includes a culinary tour of Times Square restaurants; a tour themed on the life of Irving Berlin; and a tour that follows the path Adolph Green used to take on his daily walk to the home of his songwriting partner Betty Comden.
"Ireland: A Traveler's Literary Companion" (Whereabouts Press, $14.95, due out in January) edited by James McElroy, isn't a guidebook and won't tell you where to find the James Joyce Museum in Dublin. But it does offer excerpts from "Ulysses" and works by other Irish writers - from J.M. Synge and Edna O'Brien to authors like Eilis Ni Dhuibhne who are less well-known in the U.S. The selections are designed to evoke the landscape, history and charm of Ireland, both for readers with travel plans and for those who are armchair travelers.
"Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains" ($18.95) was written by Georgann Eubanks and funded by the North Carolina Arts Council and the University of North Carolina Press, which published it. The book offers 18 half-day and one-day itineraries, including 30 maps, driving directions and information about places like the Nu-Wray Inn in Burnsville, where both Mark Twain and Elvis Presley are alleged to have stayed. Other sites mentioned in the book include the William Bartram Trail, which was followed by the protagonist of Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain," and the little town of Celo, where novelist Anne Tyler spent part of her childhood. Details at http://www.ncliterarytrails.org.
