newelty

While it would be better to be out traveling, unless you’re Andy Jarosz, you might be at home, like me, dreaming about your next trip. I get my at-home travel fix with the one thing I don’t want to lug around in my carry-on: Books!

Here are the four I’ll be reading this month.

Pagan Spain by Richard Wright

I had never heard of this book, but I was wandering through the remainder bin at Powell’s book store and picked it up. How’s this for an opener?

“In torrid August, 1954, I was under the blue skies of the Midi, just a few hours from the Spanish frontier. To my right stretched the flat, green fields of southern France; to my left lay a sweep of sand beyond which the Mediterranean heaved and sparkled. I was alone. I had no commitments. Seated in my car, I held the steering wheel in my hands.”

The whole sentiment of that opening bit reminds me of a favorite Rufus Wainright song (“one way is Rome and the other way is Mecca / on either side/ on either side of our motorbike”). Listen to the song in this live performance on YouTube:

“When I get back / I will dream in Barnes & Noble.” Yep, that’s the general idea (although hopefully a Powell’s or one of these great bookstores instead).

Creative Spaces: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators by Francesca Gavin

You know a book is for a certain kind of artsy type when the publisher feels the need to stick a bright yellow sticker on the front over with the actual book title on it. They probably realized that at the printers.

Sometimes, when I daydream about living on a houseboat in Amsterdam, I imagine that it will be filled with flea-market portraits. I’d have the kind of oddly beautiful hallway you find in these kinds of  books.

An example from my future home in London:

Japan’s Cultural Code Words by Boyé De Mente

I’m a little intimidated by this one for a few reasons: no pictures (just being honest, folks), a publisher I’ve never heard of (Tuttle Publishing of Toyko, Singapore…and Rutland, Vermont), and a formidable list of words that seem to mostly be about business ideology. I’ll read at this one for a while and see how I do.

FYI, I picked this up at a Kinokuniya bookstore in Seattle’s own Uwajimaya grocery-store-slash-food-court-slash-kimono-shop. It’s one of my favorite places in the entire city.

I ♥ Your Style by Amanda Brooks

I’m so looking forward to this book. From the outside, it might not look like a travel book, but to me it is for two reasons:

• I don’t buy souvenirs in the traditional sense. No snow globes or shot glasses, please. But I’ll buy a soft surfer-girl T-shirt that reminds me of a day in the sun in Venice, California; a Ted Baker dress at Selfridges to make me feel like Kate Moss; a pair of flats at Maison de Bonneterie in Amsterdam that I’ll wear while riding my Dutch bike at home. I will save all year to be able to buy a treat like this to take home when I travel.
• The fashion icons in this book–having only flipped through it–are often so incredible because they are associated with a certain place. Here are some women profiled in the book as examples:

Peggy Guggenheim = Venice

Early Madonna = NYC

Bardot + Deneuve = Paris, of course  (even down to the berets!)