10 Must Read Travel Books!

Reading is one of our favorite ways to occupy us when traveling during fights, train rides or while sitting on the beach relaxing. We are always looking for ways to get inspired and here are some books that will hopefully spark your interest!

  • A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home by Frances Mayes

A Place in the World explores Mayes’s passion and obsessions with houses and the things that inhabit them—old books, rich food, beloved friends, transportive art. The indelible marks each refuge has left on her and how each home influenced the next serve as the foundations of its chapters.

 

  • Imagine a City: A Pilot’s Journey Across the Urban World by Mark Vanhoenacker

This love letter to the cities of the world—from the airline pilot–author of Skyfaring—is “a journey around both the author’s mind and the planet’s great cities that leaves us energized, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives” (Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel).

 

  • Nowhere for Very Long: The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life by Brianna Madia

In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life.

 

  • The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride through Europe and the Middle East by Rebecca Lowe

ONE WOMAN, ONE BIKE AND ONE RICHLY ENTERTAINING, PERCEPTION-ALTERING JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY.

 

  • A Hard Place to Leave: Stories from a Restless Life by Marcia DeSanctis

Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.

 

  • Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia by Shafik Meghji

Blending travel writing, history and reportage, Crossed off the Map: Travels in Bolivia journeys from the Andes to the Amazon to explore Bolivia’s turbulent past and contemporary challenges. It tells the story of the country’s profound and unexpected influence on the wider world over the last 500 years – fragments of history largely forgotten beyond its borders. Once home to one of the wealthiest cities on Earth, Bolivia kickstarted globalisation, helped to power Europe’s economic growth and trigger dynastic collapse in China, and played host to everyone from Che Guevara to Butch Cassidy.

 

  • The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach by Sarah Stodola

A captivating exploration of beach resort culture—from its roots in fashionable society to its undervalued role in today’s world economy—as the travel industry approaches a climate reckoning

 

  • On the Wandering Paths by Sylvain Tesson

A walking journey through France’s vast interior becomes a meditation on both personal recovery and the role of history in the present—more than 425,000 copies sold in France

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  • Shape of a Boy: My Family and Other Adventures

Shape of a Boy is a hilarious and eye-opening travel memoir by the mother of three boys as she documents her travels with her family around the world.

 

  • Prepare for Departure: Notes on a single mother, a misfit son, inevitable mortality and the enduring allure of frequent flyer miles

At an early age, award-winning travel writer, Mark Chesnut, learned to dodge discomfort by jumping on the nearest plane, bus or car. That tactic proved especially useful when his single mother made it clear that there was no room for discussion about his gay identity.

Mark, overwhelmed with wanderlust, shoplifts in airports, avoids Southern Baptist salvation, acts like Hillary Clinton in a nursing home, and dresses in drag with his grandfather. He even creates an imaginary airline and flies away.

Now, as 89-year-old Eunice Chesnut moves to a New York City nursing home to be near her son, Mark’s obsession with travel takes a backseat as he embarks on the most emotional journey of all.

More than an end-of-life memoir, more than a collection of childhood memories and travel stories, Prepare for Departure showcases what happens when a permissive mother and a mistfit son face death while revisiting life. Buckle your seatbelts for a witty, touching and darkly humorous trip – through time, loss, forgiveness and acceptance.

 

Hope you have enjoyed these selections and let us know if you have any feedback on these books by sending us a message on our Contact Us Page.

Your Tour Host, Daniel Cope

Suggestions from Travel Pulse and affiliate links through Amazon.