I go with bookstore sites (Amazon and such) and look for "historical novels" about or from the country I want to visit. Usually these sites have a rating system which helps, but I usually look for the books at local bookstores or libraries and figure out whether I like them before I buy them...

Globecorner.com has a section called "armchair travel" broken down into areas like myth, memoir, fiction, etc., as well as a way to browse by location, though unfortunately you cannot do the one inside the other.

I don't know if it fits your criteria or list of places, but "Travels with a Tangerine" is a lovely book I read recently that blends an historical epic travel memoir with a modern-day "recreation" of part of that 30-year trip.

I should note, this is a small part of a work project, and I'd rather not track down the books in person, because it's not worth spending that much time on it.

But given all y'all are both readers and travelers, I'm gonna open this up to suggestions. Figure it's the top 30 countries visited by American tourists, and feel free to recommend anything that would be at least semi-appropriate for high-schoolers (that is, no Henry Miller or DH Lawrence!).

(And thanks for the suggestions already given, and I'd still love to find sites that recommend good history, lit, and travel lit for various destinations.)

China: Wild Swans, Empress Orchid, Becoming Madame Mao.

Also someone from here suggested this for La Fenice, in Venice, which I was mesmerized to visit.

Greece: Farewell Anatolia, Tales from a Greek Island or Greek poetry: Elytis.
Actually, Elytis is as close to "greek travel poetry" as you will ever get (talks a lot about nature, sights, people in a very naturalistic way).

Spain: A season in Granada and Don Quixote.

I do not know if that is what you are looking for. For me, to travel somewhere is to understand the history and feel the people. Historical fiction does it very well...

What I'm looking for is really broad. Pretty much anything that would give a traveler a good sense of the culture or history of the destination, or historical/popular lit that just gives you a feel for the place or the people. What you suggested seems perfect.

(And I'm amazed there's not a website for this. I feel like people are always asking for this info on sites I visit!)

England: I Capture the Castle

Italy: Under the Tuscan Sun

Australia: In a Sunburned Country

Oh, movies too. Then

Japan: Lost in Translation

I'm still thinking, and I'm sure more will come to me over the next couple of days. Keep checking back, occhiblu.

Vienna is pretty much the third character in Before Sunrise.

(Loved the city. Hated the movie.)

I think Lonely Planet's online thing is hosted by Excite. Choose your continent and country, the recs at the bottom.

"The City of Falling Angels" by John Berendt I've heard is good if you're looking for books about Venice (I have a feeling you may already have this city covered though). And if you search it on Amazon, they have a link to his suggestions for even more about it.

Off the top of my head, there's Polly Evan's 2 travel memoirs - "It's Not About the Tapas" (Spain) and "Fried Eggs with Chopsticks" (China) and Sarah Turnbull's "Almost French" (France) I've got a few more on my bookcase I could recommend but can't think of the titles/authors right now.

I'll be back later...

Thanks so much, everyone. This is a project that will probably go over the next several months, so feel free to keep adding.

(And yeah, moonshine, I did finally find some of the LP suggestions. For some reason they didn't have any for Spain, which is what I was working on last night. Weird.)

Best American Travel Writing anthology series!

Watching "room with a view" is an introduction to Florence.

Indonesia, The Year of Living Dangerously by E. A. Koch.

Southern France and Egypt, Monsieur by Lawrence Durrell.

All I got that may be overlooked by others.

I'm looking at my bookcase right now and I see 6 more travel lit-ish books, all of which I've read save one:

- C'est la Vie by Suzy Gershman about France, very good in that she writes much about navigating the idiosyncratic French bureaucracy
- Paris in Mind a collection of essays edited by Jenny Lee
- The Kindness of Strangers a great collection of short true stories edited by Don George and published by the Lonely Planet
- Instruction for Visitors by Helen Stevenson about France; I picked this up a few years ago in HK and it's on my to-be-read list
- 2 titles by Alice Steinbach: Without Reservations and Educating Alice: in the first, she travels throughout Europe, and in the second, she travels all over (Kyoto, Florence, etc.) learning things and absorbing the culture (a dream come true, if you ask me!)

Memoir-style about China:
- Jan Wong's China and Red China Blues, both are very good portraits of modern China
- also check out The Good Women of China; some of these stories are heartbreaking and I can recall at least one that made me cry

Movies off the top of my head:
Italy - Stealing Beauty
France - Chocolat, Amelie, the Red/White/Blue trilogy
China - Farewell My Concubine, Raise the Red Lantern
Prague - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (book, too, of course)

Thanks, phoenixc!

Question: Are you a parent, and if so, would you be comfortable with someone recommending Kundera to your high-school child? (I'm not trying to be snarky at all, I'm just unsure. I was reading Updike in high school, but my teachers seemed disapproving of that fact, so... I don't know. I feel like sexy books are probably less of a potential issue than sexy movies.)

You know what, nevermind. It's a great book; my bosses can edit it out if they don't like it. So there. Ha! :)