What's the best travel writing for summer 2012?

This year's Dolman shortlist highlights writers from Sharifa Rhodes Pitts to John Gimlette, but which travel books are you taking on holiday?

Just in time for my holiday on Sunday, the Authors' Club has released the shortlist for the Dolman travel book of the year, which ranges from Sharifa Rhodes Pitts' look at Harlem to Olivia Laing's walk along the River Ouse, from Jacek Hugo-Bader's road trip across Siberia to John Gimlette's trip through the three Guianas.

I like, when I'm on holiday, to base my reading around where I am, so Greece last summer necessitated John Fowles and Gerald Durrell, Newfoundland a while back required Annie Proulx, etc. Unfortunately, although I'm tempted by Colin Thubron's Tibetan adventures, and by Julia Blackburn's account of life in northern Italy, nothing on the Dolman list is set in the French Alps, where I'm off to, so I'll have to look elsewhere.

I may well revisit Mary Stewart's Nine Coaches Waiting, and Airs Above the Ground, because when can you ever have too much Mary Stewart (a rhetorical question). But have you any suggestions, Stewart and Heidi aside, for good Alps-based travel writing and fiction? And what are you taking away with you this summer?

Travel writingAlison Flood
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