The European Book Lover's Bucket List: A Grand Tour of Literature

by Caroline Taggart

Take a grand literary tour of Europe with this fascinating companion guide. Follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin in Paris and the route of Madame Bovary’s carriage ride in Rouen; visit the castle overlooking the Rhine valley that lends its name to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the secret annex in an Amsterdam house where Anne Frank wrote her diary; and finally relax in the restaurants and cafés frequented by Nordic-noir heroes such as Harry Hole and Kurt Wallander.

Travelling across the continent, this highly evocative guide takes in museums, cafés and bars, author residences, bookshops and cemeteries, as well as celebrating great cities such as Dublin, Venice and Berlin that have inspired so many writers. The Book Lover’s European Bucket List is sure to encourage you to visit a new place, read a new book or, ideally, both.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2024

About the author

I was an editor for 30 years before Michael O’Mara Books asked me to write what became I Used to Know That. I think its success took everyone by surprise – it certainly did me – but it led to my writing a lot of other books and finally, after about three years, feeling able to tell people I was an author. It's a nice feeling.

Until recently the book I was most proud of was The Book of London Place Names (Ebury), partly because I am passionate about London and partly because, having written ten or so books before that, I finally felt I was getting the hang of it.

Now I have to confess I’m really excited by my first venture into continuous narrative. For A Slice of Britain: around the country by cake (AA) I travelled the country investigating, writing about and eating cake. From Cornish Saffron Cake to Aberdeen Butteries, I interviewed about 25 people who are baking cakes, biscuits and buns that are unique to their region, part of their heritage – and pretty darned delicious. The Sunday Times reviewed it and described me as ‘engaging, greedy and droll’, which pleased me enormously.

Reviews

[Mme Forte · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you enjoy reading and travel, this is your book.

This is a compendium, organized by country/region, of sites represented in authors' works and sites important to those writers in real life. Got a hankering to visit places you've read about, like the Yorkshire moors of the Brontë family, or Jane Austen's Bath, or the Paris Victor Hugo portrayed in his books? Want to see where Anne Hathaway (not the 21st-century one) or Dumas or Dickens lived? All these spots are described in this book, including places close by the main locations where the writers ate, drank, and walked.

The writing is engaging and the descriptions made me want to go overseas. I don't know when that will happen, but I really want it to.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good way to see Europe, through the eyes of great writers from all over the world. Snippets of the writers work is interspersed with details of their lives.

[Gabriella · Rating 4 out of 5]

will definitely be using this for inspiration!

[Daria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection of sketches on various literature-related places in Europe. Does cover the majority of European countries and gives ideas for future travel plans.