I was a bit taken aback Sunday when I saw Russell Banks, in the New York Times Book Review, mention travel books as his "guilty pleasure." Especially when he included "classics from Herodotus to Burton to Kapuscinski" - none of whom is exactly beach reading. Can't travel get any respect? I wondered. But then he redeemed himself, and the genre, by adding that his guilt may be because "serious travel is difficult and dangerous, and it's so easy and safe to stay home and read about it instead."
