An Invitation to Armchair Travel

Three Good Books to Read in May

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
—E.M. Forster: A Room with a View

Hatchards on Piccadilly is said to be the oldest bookshop in London. I always just want to stay there for hours and hours.

May is the month where doors start opening—into gardens, sunlit paths, pavement cafés, and—if we are really lucky—train compartments. We start dusting off dreams we may have postponed while the world was darker.

Perhaps, like me, you are planning real travel (more about that later, I promise). Or perhaps you are staying closer to home for the foreseeable future. In either case, there is something so exquisitely nourishing about armchair travel: that pleasurable magic when a book carries you elsewhere, not just into new landscapes, but into new ways of seeing, feeling, and being.

Here are three good books to read in May, offering more than just escape: these books they travel into beauty, into truth, and into the quiet corners of the self.

A Room with a View (E. M. Forster, 1908)

A Room with a View is a radiant and gently satirical novel of travel, self-discovery, and awakening desire. We follow young Lucy Honeychurch from the stifled drawing rooms of Edwardian England to the golden light of Florence, Italy—and back again.

The story unfolds in two parts, contrasting the sensual openness of Italy with the propriety of Surrey, all the way making us wonder whether Lucy will finally choose familiarity or freedom.