SETTLE down with travel tomes and gourmet journeys to inspire wanderlust.
France: A Sense of Place by Francois d'Humieres, photography by Christian Sarramon and Isabelle Rozenbaum (Thames & Hudson, $59.95): The splendid A Sense of Place picture-book series - India, Morocco and Vietnam are among the destinations covered - consists of album-style assemblies of photography, design snippets, quotes (in this case from Ernest Hemingway and Francois Rabelais, among others) and time-honoured recipes.

Consider an almond tartlet recipe from Edmond Rostand's 19th-century play Cyrano de Bergerac, complete with "slim-waisted" tartlet moulds, or simply conjure the perfect French dressing by memorising this marvellous formula from poet and playwright Francois Coppee: "Four men are needed to make a salad: a spendthrift for the oil, a miser for the vinegar, a sage for the salt and a madman for the pepper."

Vanishing Ireland: Further Chronicles of a Disappearing World by James Fennell and Turtle Bunbury (Hachette, $75): This follow-up to Vanishing Ireland chronicles the lives of 41 Irish residents across the country, from Stradbally to Ballymote. Mostly these are rural folk who have lived through hard times. Many left school when they were barely in their teens to help out at home; in the early 20th century it was nothing for a woman to bear 12 children, one a year until she all but dropped.

As such stories fade from the Irish consciousness, a book such as this is all the more valuable. James Fennell's photography is ravishing and the faces so familiarly Irish, such as that of Paddy Heneghan, born in 1922 in Delphi, County Mayo, and a ghillie all his adult life. Still a bachelor ("he has loved a few women but never enough to change their name", writes Turtle Bunbury), he has enjoyed better success with salmon. Heneghan admits to being a fish whisperer. "He learned the hard way, earning the wrath of his grandfather when, aged seven, he cast his line and caught a pony by the ear." It's a nostalgic journey, full of stories small and tall, told with great humour. What a lovely gift for those with Irish roots....http://www.theaustralian.com.au/