Used to be, most travel-related books could be sorted conveniently into two categories:
- Fact-based traditional guidebook series published by Frommer's, Fodor's or Fielding's, ideal for highlighting or clipping before a trip.- Coffee-table pictorials, often sparse in content but glossy enough in style to impress neighbors.
In this era of specialized travel, arguably the most entertaining new publications take a different approach. Different in almost every imaginable way.
How else do we explain "Welcome to Lickskillet and Other Crazy Places in the South," "Pedaling Through Provence," "The Secrets of Pistoulet," "Let's Party Europe" and "A Foxy Old Woman's Guide to Traveling Alone"?
Here is a quick peek at some of the most unusual publications to cross travel desks this year.
In "Welcome to Lickskillet" (Crane Hill, $21.95), author Kathy Kemp and photographer Keith Boyer seek out the stories behind villages with the funniest and oddest names in the Deep South - among them Smut Eye and Trickem, Ala.; Social Circle and Santa Claus, Ga.; Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.; and South of the Border, N.C.
Lickskillet? It's what remains of a crossroads community near Hazel Green in Madison County, Ala., centered at the intersection of Charity Lane and Butter and Egg Road. Longtime resident Jimmie Sue Moore explains the name to Kemp: "In the late 1800s or early 1900s, they had a ball team here. At the end of the games, people went to the local store to visit. Somebody would always ask who won, and the winner would say, `We licked their skillet."'
It's also a small community in Macon County, N.C., named, according to Kemp, by a group of weary hunters who avoided washing dishes when wild dogs wandered into their camp and licked each pot and pan clean.
And, Kemp writes, it's a former community in Harris County, Ga., so named because a post-Civil War fish fry attracted a man so fond of fish that he offered to lick the skillet in which it was fried.
If "Pedaling Through Provence" and "Pedaling Through Burgundy" (Workman, $14.95 each) don't produce as many belly laughs, they sure encourage healthy ways to fill the tummy. Sarah Leah Chase offers a colorful variation on the traditional cookbook, weaving scores of recipes among anecdotes gleaned during bicycling trips in two of France's most enchanting regions.
"The Secrets of Pistoulet" (Stewart, Tabouri and Chang, $18.95), with text and illustrations by Jana Kolpen, is touted as an enchanted fable of food, magic and love. Set on a farm in the southwest of France, it extends the realm of travel into the imagination.
"Let's Party Europe" (Vagabond, $12.95) is more down-to-earth. Authors Sam Khedr, Mark Maxam "and friends" discuss the continent's best bars, dance clubs, beaches ... well, you get the idea.
As the introduction warns, if you're trying to discern opening hours for the Louvre, "put this book back on the shelf and concentrate on aspirin and Dr. Scholl's."
"A Foxy Old Woman's Guide to Traveling Alone" (Crossing Press, $10.95) offers insights of a tamer nature. In Part 1, author Jay Ben-Lesser, who has traveled around the world 13 times, presents "Nine Steps to Confident Solo Travel." In Part 2, she discusses topics as diverse as personal safety, a travel budget and meeting men along the way.