Want a great Caribbean vacation? Start with good novels.
Want a great Caribbean vacation? Start with good books.
Planning a trip is exciting. One of the best parts of travel can be before you leave is perusing the tour guidebooks and travel books. Those are fine sources of information. Then you may have months to concoct what you’re going to do with those 2 weeks in the Caribbean islands.
You can luxuriate in the possibilities, swimming around in a place’s past, present, and future, before you even touch down.
To help you in the research phase of your journey include a few good fiction novels in your plans. Authors can give you a sense of place with all your senses. Their books help you see the people, places, and secret worlds of a local. You taste the food, smell the variety scents of the local, and love the unique cultures. An author will give the inside stories of places which a tour or guidebook could never give you.
Here are three great books to start you on your memorable island journey.
The Buccaneers of America | Port Royal
Location: Jamaica
Originally published in 1678, this book by Alexander Exquemelin (or Esquemeling) is an eyewitness account of the birth of the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean. It is a source for more famous works, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s excellent Treasure Island, Peter Benchley’s more recent Island, and the Disney film franchise Pirates of the Caribbean, borrowed heavily.
Don’t Stop the Carnival
By:Herman Wouk
Location: Virgin Islands
It’s every parrot head’s dream: to leave behind the rat race of the workaday world and start life all over again amidst the cool breezes, sun-drenched colors, and rum-laced drinks of a tropical paradise.
It’s the story of Norman Paperman, a New York City press agent who, facing the onset of middle age, runs away to a Caribbean island to reinvent himself as a hotelkeeper.
It’s the novel in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s bestselling novels, such as The Caine Mutiny and War and Remembrance, draws on his own experience. Wouk and his family lived for seven years on an island in the sun.
Island in the Stream
By: Ernest Hemingway
Location: Bimini
A classic from Ernest Hemingway. First published in 1970, nine years after Hemingway’s death. Follow the story of an artist and adventurer — a man much like Hemingway himself. Beginning in the 1930s, Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson, from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream island of Bimini through his antisubmarine activities off the coast of Cuba during World War II. Hemingway is at his mature best in this beguiling tale.
Now for your viewing pleasures, enjoy the following videos.
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Want more book suggestions for other travel locations?
Please come back to find out what to read…………….
for places around the globe.