Travel Reading List

For the post today I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. I need a new book to read and you need a list of the best travel-inspired books available. So, I scoured the Internet and made a list of the books everyone is raving about. Full disclosure: I have not read all of these so I cannot give you my personal opinion on them, but I put a link to each Goodreads page so you can make your own decisions before trying them out. I would also love if we could start a discussion in the comments about these books. So if you have read any of these or have your own to add to the list, leave a comment below!

Best Travel Stories

1. A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts
2. A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns by Denis Lipman
3. A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveler by Frances Mayes
4. Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the "King and I" Governess by Susan Morgan
5. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
6. First Comes Love, then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and A Third World Adventure Changed My Life by Eve Brown-Waite
7. The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
8. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
9. The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
10. Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer by Rolf Potts
11. Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie
12. Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer
13. The Names of Things by Susan Brind Morrow
14. Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson
15. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
16. Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen
17. The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
18. Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson
19. The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham
20. Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman
21. Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
22. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts
23. Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard
24. Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach
25. Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler by Lavinia Spalding

Recommendations from friends (and me):

1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany by Mark Greenside
4. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
6. The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World. By Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner
7. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
8. The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho
9. The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz
10. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Whether you are a world traveler or an armchair tourist, these books should keep you riveted! Save this list to refer back to later or follow the Pinterest board where I pinned each book mentioned here and a few more I found.

Today for the fun fact I want to introduce you to an interesting historical figure, and one of my own personal idols. Evliya Celebi was an Ottoman Turkish traveler who spent 40 years exploring the Ottoman Empire and left behind 10 volumes of his travels. However, many of his retellings were exaggerated or made up, so we cannot rely heavily on his descriptions, but we can get a better idea of what life was like in the Ottoman Empire during the 17th Century. Check out The Book of Travels, a virtual exhibit of sights and sounds chronicling Celebi's travels to learn more about the world's first travel writer. Also look forward to an entire post devoted to him and other travel writers I look up to.

Thank you for reading! Don't forget to leave your recommendations below!
-Sam