Books to Inspire Your Travels
Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers
Buy it: $28.95, amazon.com
A road trip to Alaska is at the heart of this novel, a story about a family running from their everyday lives. The two children in the car, Ana and Paul, will charm you instantly with their careful attention to the world around them.
My Berlin Kitchen: Adventures in Love and Life by Luisa Weiss
Buy it: $17, amazon.com
Meet Luisa Weiss, a writer, cook, and blogger who decided to uproot her life in New York in search of love, hope, and happiness across the Atlantic. This heartwarming memoir is built of memories, family history, and recipes, which form the building blocks of Weiss’ life in Berlin.
On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation by Alexandra Horowitz
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
We look, but how often do we really see? Alexandra Horowitz delves into the act of observation, framing her research, interviews, and perspectives through eleven walks that she takes around her Manhattan stomping grounds.
Every Frenchman Has One by Olivia de Havilland
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Dive into Olivia de Havilland’s legendary move to Paris through the memories of the actress herself. With biting wit and tongue-in-cheek anecdotes aplenty, de Havilland narrates her troublesome and utterly entertaining journey toward becoming a true French lady.
Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton
Buy it: $35, amazon.com
If you want to learn about the curiosities of the planet—including New Zealand’s glow worm-filled caves and India’s intricate stepwells—then this atlas is for you. You’ll find yourself poring over the world’s fascinating features, an explorer immersed in fantastic sights until the very last page.
South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature by Margaret Eby
Buy it: $25.95, amazon.com
Explore the South through its literature—and the eye of Margaret Eby, who searches for the answers to the question ‘what makes a Southern writer?’ in the works of Southern authors, as well as the places in which they lived and wrote.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Buy it: $28.95, amazon.com
With her life in shambles, Cheryl Strayed decided to set out on the Pacific Crest Trail, hiking, camping, and making her way alone. Strayed's memoir is about searching, striving, and making peace with yourself and the world around you. It tells a story of healing and strength, of starting over and venturing out with little more than hope and a pair of sturdy hiking boots.
City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World edited by Catie Marron
Buy it: $32.50, amazon.com
Travel the world alongside eighteen writers—among them Zadie Smith and David Remnick—as they explore city squares around the globe, the urban public spaces that signify so much more than geography.
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Why do we travel? How do we do it? Explore the whys and hows of travel alongside Alain de Botton in this charming work. From observation to anticipation, he delves into the planes of experience, the unexpected and utterly delightful dimensions that keep us leaving home for parts unknown.
Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads by Paul Theroux
Buy it: $29.95, amazon.com
Travel writer Paul Theroux explores the Deep South, taking in the music, cuisine, and culture of a place that is brimming with life—and plenty of contradictions.
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
Buy it: $15.99, amazon.com
When Bill Bryson expatriated to England in the 1970s, he began gathering the ideas that would become Notes from a Small Island, a laugh-out-loud love-letter travelogue to a fascinating place.
Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival by Jeffrey Gettleman
Buy it: $27.99, amazon.com
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jeffrey Gettleman tells his story of Africa in this moving memoir. It’s a tale of a continent that calls him home and a love story that draws him away. Woven with stories about his journalism work in East Africa for the New York Times, this book explores Gettleman’s two loves—and his attempts to nurture both.
Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Go on an adventure with Richard Grant as he traverses the Mississippi Delta. After relocating from New York City, Grant and his girlfriend, Mariah, settle into a new existence, one characterized by alligators and eccentric neighbors, plus plenty of catfish and blues.
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Where is happiness? Follow self-proclaimed grump Eric Weiner as he travels the globe searching for happy people and happy places, all while combining funny writing, psychological insights, scientific studies, and plenty of memorable travel stories.
The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Follow Robert Macfarlane as he searches for the last wild places in Great Britain and Ireland. The untamable landscapes that stir his imagination will captivate yours too. Then read Macfarlane’s latest, Landmarks, about our connection to place through literature, dialect, and place names.
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
Buy it: $26.95, amazon.com
If you’ve ever wanted to learn another language, Jhumpa Lahiri gets you. Let her ignite your curiosity with her passion for her second language, Italian—the language in which she wrote this glimmering novel. (It’s translated here for the rest of us.)
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
Buy it: $18, amazon.com
Rebecca Solnit’s exploration of walking—as historical force, political act, and cultural experiment—is captivating. She probes walking throughout history, focusing on walkers whose steps made indelible imprints, including Wordsworth, Thoreau, Gary Snyder, and Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet.
The Best American Travel Writing of 2016 edited by Bill Bryson
Buy it: $14.95, amazon.com
If anyone knows travel writing, it’s Bill Bryson. Read his picks for best American travel writing of the year and expect eye-opening essays, hilarious anecdotes, and good stories galore.
South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion
Buy it: $21, amazon.com
Take a peek into Joan Didion’s notebooks, which are filled with observations from a road trip she took in June 1970. On the road, she traversed Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama before heading west.
Upstream by Mary Oliver
Buy it: $26, amazon.com
This book of essays will inspire a walk in the woods, an hour spent sitting outside, and a lifetime’s worth of contemplation. It reminds readers that you don’t have to go very far to experience something life-changing and new.
Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Sullivan’s essays take readers on a veritable road trip of America’s cultural highways, from Kentucky to the Ozarks to Florida and back again, exploring places and cultures—and the people who act upon them.
Up in the Air by Walter Kirn
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
If the thought of spending your day at the airport fills you with excitement instead of dread, this novel is for you. (If it sounds familiar, maybe you saw the 2009 film of the same name starring George Clooney.)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
Buy it: $17, amazon.com
If this novel doesn’t inspire you to buy a plane ticket or plan a road trip immediately, nothing will. Over ten years after it was first published, Gilbert’s story of searching for healing and hope across the globe continues to inspire. Once you read it, you’ll want to read everything else Elizabeth Gilbert has written (we’d suggest The Signature of All Things, for starters).
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Buy it: $9.75, amazon.com
This classic is a myth about the wonders of travel which follows one young shepherd from an Andalusian pasture to distant urban centers and as far afield as Egypt in search of answers to his questions. It is a celebration of exploration, of following your path wherever it may lead.
When in French: Love in a Second Language by Lauren Collins
Buy it: $17, amazon.com
When Lauren Collins fell in love with a Frenchman named Olivier and built a relationship in English, she decided she needed to learn French. Follow her travails, both heartwarming and hilarious, as she learns to communicate in French—in the name of love.
The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux
Buy it: $15.95, amazon.com
Take a rollicking train ride from the comfort of your own home by reading about writer Paul Theroux’s adventures on the track during a continent-crossing journey from London’s Victoria Station to Tokyo and then back again on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
A Year in the World by Frances Mayes
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Frances Mayes, a passionate globetrotter and writer-explorer, travels to Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and North Africa. She cooks, writes, walks, and converses, gathering insights about what she sees and hears along the way. Also read her memoir Under the Tuscan Sun for an instant case of Italian wanderlust.
The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo
Buy it: $17, amazon.com
Philip Caputo embarks on an epic road trip from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, with his wife and their two dogs. One truck, one trailer, sixteen thousand miles, and countless conversations later, Caputo is left with one wild ride of a book.
Mosquitoland: A Novel by David Arnold
Buy it: $10.99, amazon.com
When young Mim Malone is uprooted by a move from Ohio to Mississippi, she turns around and goes right back. Hop aboard Mim’s Greyhound bus journey back to Ohio and back to her mom. Settle in for this lively ride as Mim meets a curious cast of characters on her northbound bus.
Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon
Buy it: $16, amazon.com
Get to know America from a new point of view through William Least Heat-Moon’s classic book, which is filled with his explorations of small towns, fascinating people, and unforgettable place names—Remote, Oregon, and Whynot, Missisippi among them.
Short Walks from Bogota: Journeys in the New Colombia by Tom Feiling
Buy it: $18.95, amazon.com
Tom Feiling explores Colombia, traversing the areas around Bogota that are opening up and rebuilding after years of conflict. The conversations he has are eye-opening and the descriptions he shares of the landscape and what he learns there are captivating, sharp, and complex.
The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis
Buy it: $29.95, amazon.com
If your travel tastes veer more toward the historic, take up this tome, a long view of the making of the Gulf of Mexico, the characters whose interests affected the waters, and the political and cultural waves of the area across the eras.
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Buy it: $15.95, amazon.com
This is Karen Blixen’s memoir of the seventeen years she spent in Kenya on a farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Read her sweeping stories, and then watch the film of the same name starring Meryl Streep to intensify your wanderlust even more.
Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the World’s Most Unusual Corners by Travis Elborough and Alan Horsfield
Buy it: $29.99, amazon.com
Immerse yourself in the fantastical with this exploration of the improbable, unusual, and just-plain-surprising places that can be found across the face of the earth (if you look hard enough, that is).
Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck
Buy it: $12, amazon.com
Steinbeck tells the story of a journey across America alongside Charley, his poodle and companion for the duration. At 58, the author set out to rediscover his homeland, and along the way, his reflections and surprises took the form of this treasure of a travelogue.
Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies by Alastair Bonnett
Buy it: $25, amazon.com
Join Alastair Bonnett on a wild ride to discover the mysterious geographies of the world—from fleeting islands and unconquered deserts to moving villages and unexpected borders.
The pages of these travel books will transport you.