12 Best Travel Books to Inspire Your Next Adventure

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Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 was a year of canceled trips, closed borders, and isolation.

While it’s too early to say what 2021 will bring, there is at least one safe way you can still satisfy your wanderlust: by reading the best travel books! (Take that, stay at home orders!)

Best Travel Books

Below are 12 of the best travel books that will take you around the world and make you fall in love with the art of traveling again.

1. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

After the death of her mother and the dissolution of her marriage, Cheryl Strayed felt she had nothing to lose. At 26, and with no training or experience, she set out to hike over a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail through California and Oregon to Washington State, alone.

With suspense, warmth, and humor, Wild is Cheryl’s story of the journey that maddened, but ultimately healed her.

2. The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton won’t tell you where to go, but he will tell you how and why you should go. The Art of Travel offers a unique perspective of all the subtleties that make will make you view every moment, from exotic seascapes to takeoffs at Heathrow, with new appreciation.

3. Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain was a travel inspiration and hero to many. In Medium Raw, the follow-up to his successful Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain traces his unexpected voyage from “journeyman cook” to a world-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood.

The book is full of Bourdain’s confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.

4. Lands of Lost Borders by Kate Harris

In this travel memoir, Kate Harris documents her year spent cycling the Silk Road. Harris weaves adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, reminding readers of what connects us to the natural world and ultimately to each other.

5. From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke

Tembi finds love at first sight with Saro on a street in Florence. However, Saro’s traditional Sicilian family doesn’t approve of him marrying a black American woman. Still, the couple forges on and build a happy life in Los Angeles, before adopting a baby girl. Eventually, they reconcile with Saro’s family just as he faces a formidable cancer.

From Scratch documents three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter as she tries to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown. Where once she was estranged from Saro’s family, she now finds comfort and nourishment at her mother in law’s table.

While discovering the healing power of fresh food and a close knit community, Tembi reflects on her and Saro’s incredible romance.

6. The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost by Rachel Friedman

Rachel Friedman has always been the good girl who plays it safe and sticks to a plan, so she surprises everyone (including herself) when on a whim she buys a one-way ticket to Ireland.

There she meets a free-spirited Australian girl, who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong adventure that takes her to three continents, introduces her to new friends, and reveals a previously unrealized passion for travel. 

7. Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux takes readers on an adventure-filled road trip from Cairo to Cape Town, traveling by bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train.

Along the way, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists to reveal the real Africa and take us beyond the safari tours.

8. Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche

After being swept off her feet by a soulful Argentinian in a San Francisco bar, she decides that in order to conquer her fear of deep water and keep the man of her dreams, she must embark on the voyage of her nightmares.

Together, the two set off to sail across the Pacific, and Torre finds herself fighting to keep the boat, her new relationship, and her sanity afloat.

9. The Beach by Alex Garland

This novel follows Richard, a young traveler in search of “the Beach,” which is the subject of legend among young adventurers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, and freshwater falls surrounded by jungle.

It’s rumored that a carefully selected few have settled at the Beach into a communal Eden. But with time, it becomes clear that “Beach culture” has troubling—and potentially deadly—undercurrents.

10. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

Travel writer Bill Bryson takes readers along for his latest adventure, this time in wild Australia. Get to know the friendly locals, experience the hottest, driest weather, and learn about the most peculiar and lethal wildlife through Bill’s hilarious, fact-filled, and adventurous writing.

11. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Following her divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert left behind all the outward marks of her success and set out on a journey that would take her to three countries—Italy, India, and Indonesia—to explore three different aspects of her nature. Her adventures are full of surprising discoveries, both about herself and the world.

12. Footsteps by The New York Times Staff

Footsteps: From Ferrante’s Naples to Hammett’s San Francisco, Literary Pilgrimages Around the World is a collection of the New York Times‘ travel column of the same name.

Each essay explores a different destination from literature, from the “dangerous, dirty and seductive” streets of Elena Ferrante’s Naples to the “stone arches, creaky oaken doors, and riverside paths” of Oxford.

What Is a Travel Book Called?

A travel book is any book about traveling to a certain country or region, or about the process and experience of traveling in general.

This can take the form of a guide book (which is mostly informational and intended to help travelers navigate a certain place), or a travel memoir (which follows the writer’s journey and explores how that journey transformed them).

A travel journal, on the other hand, is a record made by the traveler, sometimes in diary form, to document the traveler’s experiences.

Write Your Own Travel Book

Becoming a professional travel writer is a career dream for many. While it can take time to turn that passion into a full-time income, it is possible with a lot of hard work and dedication. Learn how you can do it in our guide to becoming a travel writer.

If you’re interested in freelance writing, check out this list of writing magazines that pay writers, which includes some opportunities for travel writers.

Do you have a favorite travel book or travel writer? Share your top picks in the comments below!

 

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The post 12 Best Travel Books to Inspire Your Next Adventure appeared first on TCK Publishing.

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