“Australia”
(Eyewitness Travel Guides, $29.95)
A hiking trail in Carnarvon National Park will take you past Aboriginal rock art, a spring-fed pond and a gorge where a forest of eucalyptus trees grows. But you don’t have to take this book’s words for it. Not when you can look at its pictures too. Eyewitness Travel Guides excels at show and tell. So, on just a single page, you can see the ocher-outlined hand prints left by ancient artists, see the fern-topped rocks that guard the pond and see the ribbon of sky that stretches across the forested gorge — all in photos that, though small, are a pleasure to look at because they are crisply published on thick, slick paper stock. And you can even judge whether the hike is one you’d want to tackle, thanks to the softly rendered trail map, which, along with a few pertinent sentences, completes the page devoted to the national park. More than 570 other pages — one of the heftiest in the Eyewitness series — show what there is to see and do in Australia. Some of those pages contain cut-away illustrations of how the Great Barrier Reef was created, or architectural drawings of city streets that give a three-dimensional bird’s-eye view. Other pages give the layout of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games site and tell how to navigate that city by ferry and water taxi. Thirty dollars is a lot to pay for a guidebook. But that’s a small investment when you’re researching the trip of a lifetime.
“The Field Guide to Elvis Shrines”
(Renaissance Books, $15.95)
There’s a discount furniture store at 5015 N. Lankershim Blvd. now. But once upon a time, the North Hollywood address was home to Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors, famous for its flashy proprietor — after said proprietor crafted that gold lame tuxedo for Elvis. That spot isn’t what it used to be, and neither are some of the other locations listed here, like the former RCA Studios at 155 E. 24th St. in New York where Elvis recorded “Blue Suede Shoes,” and the former Prescription House at 1727 Madison Ave. in Memphis where Elvis, says the guide, reportedly had eight prescriptions filled the day before he died. If Elvis bought a house, stayed in a motel, ate in a cafeteria, checked into a hospital, graced a movie set, bought a motorcycle, opened a bank account or gave a concert, that place and its Elvis history will be listed here. Some even have maps. It’s a topical tour book that doubtless would have been thicker, had Elvis consented to hold concerts outside of Hawaii and North America.
“The Grown-Up’s Guide to Running Away From Home”
(10 Speed Press, $11.95)
Maybe you’re ready to go. Make that go with a capital G, capital O. The kind of GO that means selling the lawn mower and the living-room suite and buying a one-way ticket to your future. This book helps you determine your potential for successfully living in a foreign country, how to know when you are ready to GO and, when the time comes, how to deal with all those nags you thought you were running away from — taxes, health insurance and bureaucratic red tape. There are tips on how to move with pets, learn another language and buy a used car overseas. There are words of encouragement from those who have successfully GONE. But beware the down-side. The book also looks at some famous runaways — F. Scott Fitzgerald, for one — who, in their running, made a mess of things. (510-559-1600)
MAGAZINES
Golf & Travel
(Winter, $3.95)
This is a magazine about golf-as-lifestyle, not golf-as-sport. Just look at how the 10-page fashion spread fills the foregrounds with waif-faced models that are Calvin Klein-ad thin, while the location — Adare Manor, the place to stay between rounds at Ireland’s Ballybunion, Tralee and Lahinch — merely serves as backdrop. Then there’s the take on golfing in Morocco: “Sultan of Swing” comes with lots of colorful street scenes of Marrakech and a couple of postcard shots of fairways. Names, yardages and par figures pepper the story, and there’s a companion piece about the King Hassan II Golf Trophy. A “Golf & Meetings” section extols the merits of The Kohler American Club in Wisconsin. There’s a special advertising section on buying fairway homes. Another special advertising section, this one on the signature holes of South Carolina, borrows its headline, “By this, ye shall know them,” from the New Testament. What’s missing in all of this, despite the exotic locations, are the psychological and physiological how-tos of the game. Don’t look here for advice on improving your swing. Only on where to show it off. On the stands until Feb. 10.
GEAR
Febreze, travel size
(From Procter & Gamble, about $1.75)
One of the unpleasantries of packing for a trip is that your clothes don’t always smell fresh when, countless hours later, you finally are able to unpack them. Or perhaps your clothes have picked up an odor during your travels, perhaps in a smoke-filled pub. A few squirts of Febreze can eliminate those odors. This is the same spray-on household product that has been on the market for a while. The travel-size version, at 3.4 ounces, pays for its suitcase space by “cleaning away” the odors and — despite company claims to the contrary — leaving a light perfume scent. Some fabrics and some odors may require a heavier application from the product’s pump-action nozzle. Press materials explain that Febreze works by “dissolving” the odor as the fabric dries. We’ve tried it, and it does the job, not only on clothing but (when the next shower is still many miles away) on smoky-smelling hair.
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Toni Stroud’s e-mail address is tstroud@tribune.com.
