Unique Travel Guides

I love to read and I love to travel. Thus springs my small obsession with guide books. What could be better than books about different locales around the world - other than actually traveling there yourself. Even then, I might go as far as to say that some places are better visited through a guide book while sitting on your couch than actually going there.

Knowing a little about the history and culture of a certain place enhances the experience when you, say, take a tour of that cathedral or talk with locals about their political views. And then there's the good insider's tips you glean from someone who has already been wherever it is you're reading about. But with people like Steve's and Frommer's dominating the mass guide-book market, it can be hard to get a fresh perspective on where to go and what to see.

In the next day or so, I'll be highlighting the guidebooks I'm especially enamored with.

"A Rambling Fancy in the footsteps of Jane Austen" by Caroline Sanderson

For all lovers of Jane Austen and her novels, Sanderson hearkens back to an time characterized by balls, fancy frocks, and drawing rooms in this guide to Jane Austen's England. Sanderson visits nine places, including Bath, Lyme Regis, and Kent that provided a backdrop to Austen's novels as well as her life. A chapter is devoted to each location where Sanderson indulges in musings about how that place influenced Austen's life and writings.

In her introduction, Sanderson says, "What I planned to do with this book was quite different. I wanted to follow my nose and, like Fanny Price [main character of Mansfield Park], get into a 'wondering strain' while sitting in pews or on stiles or in teashops, standing in fields or museums or churchyards." Although she purposed to stray from common tourist attractions, all of the places she highlights can be visited by anyone with an interest to do so.

Since my minor tutorial is on Jane Austen, I plan to take my own rambling fancy following the footsteps Sanderson so artfully layed out in her book.