In between touring ancient ruins and dodging the hordes of tiny Smart Cars that are as ubiquitous in Rome as SUVs are here, I noticed immediately that the Twilight series and Angels and Demons are at least as popular in Italy and Greece as they are in the U.S.

The Angels and Demons movie was prominently advertised on billboards all around town, even within thurible-swinging distance from the Vatican.  Perhaps the official ban on the filmmakers using Roman churches and the threat of a boycott merely acted as effective marketing tools, or else Romans are particularly rabid Dan Brown fans.  Some members of our group especially enjoyed reading the book while we toured sites in the Eternal City mentioned in it, particularly the looming Castel Sant’Angelo.

Equally ubiquitous, especially in Greece, were copies of the Twilight series in all manner of unfamiliar languages.  From convenience stores in highway rest areas to flea market stalls to a kiosk in the Athens airport, the books were everywhere.

I was a little surprised, on the other hand, that hardly anybody could be seen reading on trains and buses or in parks or cafes.  In a book I’ve been reading called The Dark Heart of Italy, by Tobias Jones, a British transplant to Italy, an interesting idea about this is suggested:

I don’t know whether it’s because of the Reformation, which was iconoclastic and “written,” or because Britain has had, on the whole, the better writers and Italy much superior artists, but Italy is a visual country, Britain a literary one. . . . (V)ery few people read newspapers, even fewer buy or borrow books.  A massive percentage of Italian adults don’t read one book a year.  To survive, the edicole–the little pavilions on street corners which sell newspapers–have to double as fetish-shops, selling gadgets and videos and soft- to hard-porn magazines alongside the newsprint.

It’s definitely true that there are more beautiful things to look at in Italy than the eye can seem to take in at once, and I was way too distracted to very often pick up the copy of Homer’s Odyssey I’d brought along for some seemingly geographically appropriate reading.  Once we got to Greece it was awesome to read a few of the poem’s descriptions of the sea and islands and then look up and see them right there, but more often I was just staring out the window of a train or bus and trying to take in all the incredible sights. 

The collected works of Rick Steves are almost unavoidable in any bookstore or library travel section, and I’ve usually considered him a reliable-if-slightly-nerdy resource for basic travel preparations.  When I picked up his newest book after a glance at its arresting title, the mild-mannered, gigantic 80’s-glasses-frame-wearing PBS icon became my new personal hero by the middle of the first chapter.

Travel As a Political Act is only one of five travel books Steves has already published in 2009, but it is a particularly thoughtful collection of essays illustrating the interconnectedness of world cultures and the fundamental value of travel.  Steves makes a powerful argument about how travel can change the way we think about the world, and his book suggests interesting ways travelers can broaden their personal, cultural, and political perspectives.

Steves turns out to be way more of a radical hippie than I ever would have imagined, and throughout the book he tells fascinating tales of his own travel experiences to non-traditional vacation spots like the Balkans, El Salvador, and Iran.  He is a passionate advocate for the value of travel as a humanizing force, and the book illustrates the mind-expanding virtues of experiencing Muslim cultures, third world villages, and other locales that challenge Americans’ cultural norms.

An especially valuable section addresses the importance of overcoming fear in order to gain an understanding of alien societies.  Steves advocates a ”refusal to be terrorized by terrorists” in a passage that aptly summarizes his book’s theme:

“Every time I’m stuck in a long security line at the airport, I reflect on one of the most disconcerting results of terrorism:  The very people who would benefit most from international travel–those who needlessly fear people and places they don’t understand–decide to stay home.  I believe the most powerful things an individual American can do to fight terrorism are to travel a lot, learn about the world, come home with a new perspective, and then work to help our country fit more comfortably and less fearfully into this planet.”

Steves also reflects on lessons that can be learned from visting countries like Denmark, routinely listed as the happiest nation on earth while operating with a rather different “formula for societal success” than our own.  He also visits the still smoldering nations of the former Yugoslavia to observe the after-effects of a ruinous war, and he considers alternative approaches to social problems like drug abuse offered by Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Steves’s travelogues and observations are like the lectures of an engaging professor, enlightening without being preachy, and his book is a thoughtful challenge to Americans to engage with the outside world for our own good as well as the benefit of the planet.  After reading Travel As a Political Act, my personal pantheon of literary heroes was re-shuffled to make room for the dude with the squeaky voice, goofy grin, and greatly inspiring message.

Maybe I’m seeing them everywhere lately thanks to the holiday season, when a thoughtfully-chosen book of lists makes a solid gift for an impossibly picky movie-lover, music-aficionado, or world-traveler. There appear to be at least two warring publishing outfits working on the “1,000/1,001 . . . Before You Die” premise of list-making, and while their products seem to spawn more argument and debate than consensus, well, perhaps that’s the whole point of obsessive list-making in the first place.

The first one I ran into several months ago was the bracingly-titled 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, by Patricia Schultz. With a true Okie sense of mild inferiority, I hesitatingly paged toward the “O” section of the chapter of places to see in the United States to check out how the Sooner State was represented. I found a single entry there for our entire state–Cattlemen’s Steakhouse–which proudly sits alongside the Grand Canyon, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Count Dracula’s Castle in Romania on Ms. Schultz’s comprehensive global checklist.

Not long afterwards I ran into Schultz’s more narrowly focused 1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die, a far more realistic prospect given my own meager travel budget and rudimentary command of only a single language. Oklahoma is slightly better represented in this volume, with seven entries for the pathologically ambitious traveler to check off his or her life list.

Schultz’s books are very handy either for a starting point for serious travel research or for idle browsing and daydreaming. She provides contact information and web addresses as well as helpful tips on the best times of year to visit, and her lists encompass some off-the-beaten-path entries as well as the obvious highlights. I especially appreciated her write-ups on Oklahoma City’s own Red Earth Festival and the awesome Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.

The same publisher has also released music critic Tom Moon’s daunting 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, which hops from genre to genre in a straight alphabetical listing that is even more opinionated and arguable than Schultz’s travel volumes. Moon’s approach is thoughtful and impassioned, as he takes the “before you die” aspect of the list especially seriously. He notes in the introduction that he saw the title “as a mandate: Everything here had to have some incandescent life-changing energy inside it.” Thus readers will find The Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin rubbing elbows with Ella Fitzgerald and Flatt & Scruggs, while each entry also features key tracks and suggestions for further listening deeper in the artist’s catalog.

The list-making ante is upped by one in editor Steven Jay Schneider’s “1001″ series, which includes 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (thanks a lot, pal) as well as volumes on classical recordings, popular music, and movies. Schneider’s entries are impressively international in scope, featuring many less-familiar recommendations among foreign films and music and lengthier essays on each entry than the 1,000…Before You Die versions.

The Schneider series goes on to demand you view thousands of paintings, taste thousands of foods, and ogle thousands of buildings before exhaustedly collapsing into the sweet caress of death by sensory exhaustion. For readers who enjoy a good list-driven argument or the fantasy of sampling 1001 wines, it’s easy to enjoy (and overlook the explicit threat in the titles of) these would-be authoritative compilations.