When you land in a new destination, what should you read? It's hard to find good material with search engines because the space is SEO'd so aggressively. A Wikipedia article is fine insofar as it goes, but inevitably misses much of the texture of a place. I think it'd be neat if there was some kind of service that collated great travel writing -- especially pieces that capture something of the context of a place. (See the Davies post below.) In advance of there being a service like that -- or perhaps simply in advance of my awareness of already-existing solutions -- here's the beginning of a list of pieces in this genre that I've enjoyed.

Pointers to particularly good pieces are very welcome; I'll add to the above. And pointers to sites that attempt to solve this more broadly would be great. In either case, emails appreciated.