One of the best things about building a private library of travel books is that this genre usually leads one to collect a lot of related genres. Travel, after all, encompasses virtually every aspect of human activity. One may start, for example, with a Lonely Planet guidebook to Greece. The restaurants to which this guidebook leads you may whet a desire to learn more about Greek cooking. To better understand Greek cooking one may need to buy a book (or two or three...) about Greek history. In exploring Greek history, you may become fascinated with what little is known of Mimnermus. This fascination may whet your appetite for one or more titles about ancient Greek elegiac poetry. And so on:
As the above should make clear, virtually any sub-genre you choose as your entree into the wide world of travel writing is likely to lead you into a number of interesting, and not always obvious, byways. Guidebooks and travel essays are two of the most popular places to begin collecting the genre as a whole, so we will explore each of these in more detail over the next few days....
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