Newsletter

If you are a reader and a traveler, Booklover's Travel is for you.

 
 
Forward to a Friend
 
Join Our List


Join Our Mailing List 
In This Issue
BookLover's Travel Update
BookWoman
Travel Tips
2010 Calendar
 
Israel-May 21-June 2
 
 Ireland
TBD 
 
Maui - Early Fall
 
Italy - Late Fall
 
 
ANNOUNCEMENTS
 
For Irish music lovers, Celtic Thunder is coming to the Everett Comcast Arena, Saturday, October 30.  Tickets go on sale soon. 
 
  
 
********************

 

I'm a great fan of Irish music.  Here are some of my favorite artists, whose CDs are available in the states:
 
 
Christy Moore
 
Celtic Woman
 
The High Kings 
 
 Connie
*********************

 

 
Quick Links 
 
About Us
 
Issue: #5May/2010
BookLover's Travel Update
 
BookLover's Travel is ready to hit the road!  Our group of nine is headed for Israel on May 21 to immerse ourselves in this amazing country situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe.  We'll be plunging into archaeology, history, religion and cultural heritage as we journey around Israel.  Some of the group will continue on to Jordan, especially to see Petra, and then on to Egypt to experience the sights and history of this ancient culture via a cruise on the Nile and several days in Cairo.  We've done our reading, packed our bags, and now we're ready for the adventure to start.  This newsletter is abbreviated because we've been immersed in all things Middle Eastern.  We'll report back on the trip in the next newsletter.

 

Our tour to Ireland is a work in progress: it just keeps moving around on the calendar.  We had initially planned the trip for early fall, but we got an offer we couldn't refuse: a research safari to South Africa for early September.  So we moved Ireland to mid-July.  That time period doesn't work for folks who've shown an interest, so for now the dates for the tour are still up in the air.  Let us know if you've just been itching to see the Emerald Isle with a small group of like-minded folks.  Check out our website for trip particulars: the itinerary is the same, just the dates are wrong.  When we return from the Middle East, we'll firm up the Ireland tour dates.

 

Shalom!

 
For more info or to sign up go to www.bookloverstravel.com
 
Cynthia and Connie
BookLover's Travel
BookWoman 
A Cup of Irish History with Your Mystery
 

If you need a summer reading list, how about exploring the history of Ireland by diving into one of the many mysteries set on the Emerald Isle?  Here are five authors I really like.  Two of these writers set their mysteries in far-off times -- the 7th and 16th centuries -- while the others weave Irish history into their contemporary stories.

 

Peter Tremayne's mysteries, set in the middle of the 7th century, feature Sister Fidelma, a well-educated agent of the Irish legal system, who is a nun and the sister and daughter of Kings of Munster, one of the ancient kingdoms of Ireland.  Whereas she believes in logic and science, her companion Eadulf, an Anglo-Saxon monk, is a bit more pragmatic and down-to-earth than Fidelma.  So they make a good pair of "detectives." Often the mysteries they solve are tied to the conflicts that arose when the pagan beliefs of the Druids came face to face with the new concepts of Christianity. Actual places especially in the south and west of Ireland are presented as they would have been almost 1400 years ago.  The castle of the Fidelma's brother the king on the Rock of Cashel figures prominently in several of the books and Master of Souls is set on the Dingle Peninsula, a truly magical place even today.  Tremayne has written 21 Sister Fidelma mysteries.

 

Cora Harrison's My Lady Judge is set in 1509 in the Burren, the barren landscape on the west coast of Ireland that has been likened to a sci-fi wasteland, dotted with prehistoric structures.  The book provides a picture of Gaelic Ireland, especially the Brehon Rule of Law, the ancient Irish legal system.  Mara, the main character, is based on a real-life female Brehon (judge) whose case notes are in the British Library. The Brehon legal system emphasized mercy; kings and chiefs were elected and held accountable; slavery was not tolerated; and women were accorded respect and rights and could enter most professions, including warrior, judge and ruler.  This book is set just before the vicious Tudor land-grab and provides a vivid contrast to the period when King Henry VIII of England began to covet Ireland.  Harrison has written five books featuring Mara.

 

Erin Hart's Haunted Ground takes place in an area where bog bodies are discovered and must be investigated using modern-day forensic techniques.  These centuries-old bodies are usually ancient Irish people recovered from their deliberate or accidental graves.  Hart ties these discoveries to contemporary crimes. The novel was inspired by actual findings and interweaves Celtic culture, folklore and traditional music into the mystery. Traveling around Ireland, you can see peat bogs and stacks of cut peat in many locations, and the National Museum in Dublin has a display of actual bog bodies dug up in Ireland. Hart has written three books tying archeology to pathology in Ireland.

 

Benjamin Black (pseudonym for Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist John Bannister) sets Christine Falls in 1950s Dublin. Quirke, the main character, is a very human, flawed pathologist who faces his own demons while searching for answers to the questions raised by the deaths of the people he examines.  Those searches take him from Ireland to Boston and expose a seamy side of the actions of Dublin's Catholic society, some of whom are Quirke's family members.  Black has written three mysteries featuring Quirke.

 

Bartholomew Gill's mysteries provide a broad look at Ireland's people, places and issues.  The books include some of the usual topics we've come to expect in Irish fiction and film -- such as the Troubles, the IRA, emigration -- but several of the books have ties to Irish history. In Death of a Joyce Scholar, Peter McGarr, the chief of the murder squad of the Irish police, must study James Joyce's difficult novel Ulysses, set in 1904 Dublin, to discover clues for tracking down a contemporary murderer.  In A Death in Dublin, McGarr learns about the history of illustrated texts as he seeks to recover the Book of Kells stolen from Trinity College Library.  Gill wrote 16 McGarr books set in Ireland before his death in 2002.

 

Connie

Travel Tips

I am personally testing all my own packing tips for Israel, Jordan and Egypt.  Connie and I just purchased Kindles to lighten our book load and an international cell phone to stay in touch.  We'll let you know how they work in our next newsletter. 

Cynthia

 
BookLover's Travel
Adventures fueled by books to destinations around the world
 
We explore the art, history, and culture of destinations around the world, having read novels, mysteries, and non-fiction books set in the places we visit. BookLover's Travel tours contain something for any booklover and every traveler. 

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."  St. Augustine

Cynthia van de Erve and Connie Freeland
BookLover's Travel