|
|
Texas
Books & Authors
The
Book Lover's Tour of Texas
by Jessie Gunn Stephens
Taylor Trade Publishing (200 pp.)
2004
ISBN: 1-58979-144-4
Reviewed by Jamie Engle
|
|
You're
traveling to East Texas
and want to read a book set there, or maybe read a book by an East
Texas author. Or maybe you're looking for a few good Texas authors
and books. How would you find one, without an extensive search?
The Book Lover's Tour of Texas can help on all counts. A literary
tour of Texas, Stephens says the book is "about traveling through
Texas and reading about what you're seeing, or about what happened
in history in the place you're passing through, or about which novelists
have chosen to set their works in the very city you're visiting."
The book is part travel guide, part Texas literature guide. Stephens,
a native Texan living in Sherman,
separates the state into eight regional sections. Each section contains
a bit of the area's history, authors and literature, and the region's
attractions (especially those relating to history and natural history,
and of course, books and authors). Gray boxes highlight special collections,
archives, museums, authors, and bookstores of note. The section ends
with a Reading Tour, a list of books related to the area.
Stephens doesn't limit the scope to literary fiction or westerns.
A variety of genres are covered, including westerns, historical fiction,
nonfiction, romances, mysteries, literary fiction, science fiction
and fantasy.
Highly readable, The Book Lover's Tour of Texas is a great resource
of Texas authors, books about Texas, and books set in Texas. You'll
come away with a long list of places to visit and books and authors
you want to know more about.
© Jamie Engle, a book reviewer and freelance writer
living in North Texas. September 1, 2005
|
|
|
HOME
