2 Summer Favorites: Book Lists and Vacation Ideas

By: Charles Bowen As we roll into June, there are two stories among our traditional summer fare that newsrooms are always trying to find new angles on: Vacation ideas and summer book lists. So, here's a thought -- how about combining the two?

A cool and sophisticated Web site called Literary Traveler invites us to discover new dimensions in the literature of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Kerouac, and many others by retracing their steps. The site gives guidance on how you can explore the hills, valleys, and sea coasts that famous authors once visited and perhaps drew inspiration from. For book-loving wanderers, this is a view of the world through illustrated travelogues that follow in the lead of history's greatest writers. And tell your travel writers that it also is a fine resource for locating news about organized literary tours, such as tramping Great Britain with fellow Jane Austin enthusiasts.

To get started, visit http://www.literarytraveler.com, where the center column contains links to the latest feature articles. At this writing, the newest report was on poet Langston Hughes in Washington, D.C. "It's something of an oddity," the site notes, "to mention writers and Washington, D.C., in the same sentence; one traditionally associates the city with the federal government and policy-making. But in the years immediately following World War I, one of the most significant social and cultural movements of the 20th century, the Harlem Renaissance, received substantial support from an artistic cadre within Washington."

For the busy journalist, the site also facilitates some quick browsing of its assorted reports. Of particular interest is the "Find Topics" section in the left column through the site. Here two key links invite you to browse by author or by place. For planning travel stories, the place index is useful. It lists dozens of locations around the country and the world in alphabetical order, from Amherst, Mass., and Emily Dickinson to Western Samoa and Robert Louis Stevenson.

But this is a rambling site, not a quick-search encyclopedia, so don't merely jump to a specific portion of the alphabet. This list is made for browsing, with stops in Virginia (Edgar Allan Poe's University Days, Robert Frost in the Dismal Swamp), Los Angeles with Bertolt Brecht and Nathanael West and Unionville, Nev., with Mark Twain.

Also linked from the left column, the site preserves its recent issues, including featured reports on New England, the South, Europe, and "Hemingway's Places." And in the "See It First Hand" section are links to Literary Tours and Literary Events.

Other considerations for using Literary Traveler in your writing and editing:

1. If you need to stay up to date on the latest additions to the site, consider signing up for the site's free e-mail alert service. Click the "Subscribe to Our Free Newsletter" link at the top of any page.

2. If you write about the site itself in your news columns or Internet features, you might want to point out to your readers that Literary Traveler also has links to related travel services, such as online travel agencies.

3. Literary Traveler was launched in March 1998 by the husband-wife team of Francis and Linda McGovern, who met while studying English at Suffolk University in Boston. Their love of literature and travel inspired them to create the Web site.
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