Travel Books
 

I love me some travel books, especially those with some humor about the author's dubious ability to integrate into a foreign culture or that highlights how dealing with unfamiliarity can be hilarious. But really I just love nonfiction books that explore worlds I've never and will likely never explore in a way that bring them to life.

J. Maarten Troost got me into this genre with The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned with Savages and Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods cemented my realization that this was my bag of chips. Even the Eat portion of Eat, Pray, Love was fun even if Pray made me toss the book in the proverbial fireplace.

So what's good with travel books?

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Rings of Saturn

Among very many other things, this is a travel book of Suffolk. As far as prose goes, this is the best I've ever read.

I'm totally in love with Atlas Obscura.
I have the book, daily updates, the wall and daily desk calendars.
You could spend hours looking at the website.
Here's an example of just one location.

The Brain Museum

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Long Road South by Joseph R. Yogerst
I haven't read many travel books, but I did read this. It's just one guy recounting his trip along the entire length of the Pan-American Highway. It's more personal than you'd expect from a National Geographic book and it really caught my imagination to hear about all these remote parts of Central and South America—some of which are so isolated that no one there even speaks Spanish.

Now I'm sitting here like "There's a library a few blocks from me and travel books are well represented so should I just go hard tomorrow on my day off?"

I'm kinda thinking so but I also have a day where I don't have to leave my house. Travel books are life's crack though.

"Driving over Lemons" by Chris Stewart. He was a founding member of Genesis (drummer). Quit, did some odd jobs and ended up buying and moving to a remote farm in Spain with his wife. Problem was the owner refused to leave... Fun book though.