Japan travel book offers inspired insights via slow trains

It seems as if I have spent my whole life traveling, either physically or in the library, the velodrome of the mind. Can travel destination literature, one of the best ways to experience the world, albeit vicariously, change a life, or at least reset its course?

I believe it can. I “visited” Yegen and the Alpujarra in Spain just months after reading Gerald Brenan’s “South from Granada”; it took a bit longer, but I eventually got to Haiti because of Graham Greene’s “The Comedians.” Jan Morris’ travel anthology “Destinations” took me back to Cairo for a better look; China’s Lijiang was on the strength of Peter Goullart’s “Forgotten Kingdom.”