The books I own
Since both my father, and his father, worked for a printing and book-binding company, perhaps it’s not surprising that I grew up loving books. In fact, you could say I’m a book addict – my default activity is reading. So when I started traveling, naturally I started reading (and collecting) travel books.
The books I borrowed
For the initial planning stages, I usually rely on the library and the local Barnes and Noble. This is when I spend time with the picture guides like ”Insight” and “Exploring” and Knopf and “Eyewitness”, which are far too heavy to take on the road. (They tend to be lousy on logistics, too.)
After I decide on my destinations, I buy the books I expect to take with me. Almost always, these turn out to be Lonely Planet guides. I’m used to the format, the maps are usually good (for some reason the Morocco guide fell short of the usual standard), the mid-range hotel recommendations generally work out for me, and the logistic information is the best.
My father might be spinning in his grave, but not only do I mark up my guidebooks, I cut them up, too. I won’t travel with more than I can carry, and books are, regrettably, heavy for their size. For this trip I likely won’t mutilate “Jordan” or “Syria and Lebanon”, but I’ll probably cut Azerbaijan out of the ”Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan” guide. And although I bought the Bradt guides for Georgia and Armenia, I’ve found the maps and hotel recommendations infuriating, and they’ll be staying home.
Originally I was expecting to visit more of Turkey than just Istanbul, which is why I have a couple of Turkey guides. The Fodors guide was a welcome freebie: I post on their discussion board (as thursdaysd – www.fodors.com/community/profile/thursdaysd), and if something you write is used for one of their “Word of Mouth” sections, you get a free guide of your choice. I think this my fifth!
For New York, now that I have a printer that is also a copier, I’ll just copy a few pages out of the guides, and take some maps along.
[...] to take early retirement and go on all the trips she wished she had and never got around to. In this post she also talks of the fascination of travel guides from a different [...]