Saturday, August 07, 2010

Best travel books

I am thoroughly enjoying The Roads to Sata, a book suggested by Alan.  It's about an Englishman who walked the entire length of Japan in the mid-1980s.  So far, he has lost the first of three toenails.

I am looking through my book collection and here are the travel books I enjoyed enough to keep (instead of trading at the local used book shop or donating to the library):

Siberian Dawn: 1993 overland journey (sometimes by hitchhiking) across the length of the former U.S.S.R.
Road Fever: Record setting drive from the tip of South America to the Alaskan Arctic Ocean.
My Mercedes Is Not For Sale: Man buys used Mercedes in Amsterdam, drives it to the heart of Africa to sell it.
In Search of the Holden Piazza: Two guys drive throughout Australia in a Piazza/Isuzu Impulse and find every remaining Piazza/Impulse left in the country.
The Happy Isles of Oceania: Theroux visits Pacific islands.  My favorite of his non-fiction travel works.
Red Odyssey: Uzbek writer visits non-Russian republics in 1990.  Drives 10,000 miles.
The Other Side of Russia: A look at Siberia and Russian Far East.

Happy reading.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks, I was just looking for something to read :)

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  2. Try Hendrik Van Loon, Geography or another of his 30 plus books with a topic you like more... it won't matter, I was stunned by his superb writing style and complete mastery of each topic. I now have about 6 of his books, all have been incredible, and the connection between geography and economic and cultural success is amazingly well understood. A write who is as fun to read as his color illustrations are to relate perfectly to the page and topic they illustrate.

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  3. @jesse. Never heard of the guy. I now have Geography and The Story of Mankind on my Amazon queue. Thanks!

    Now I just need to get through The Log From the Sea of Cortez. It's been weeks and I'm not even 1/2 done with the introduction yet.

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