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What are the thirty best travel books?
Here is the list, courtesy of WorldHum, via Bookslut. I agree with most of it, recognizing that no single author (e.g., Thubron, Raban, Theroux) can receive more than one pick. But where is Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams? David Campbell's The Crystal Desert? For my first choice I would select either Naipaul's Turn in the South or Robert Byron's Road to Oxiana. Surely they forgot Marco Polo's Travels, which remains riveting. Herodotus? Can we count Democracy in America? Gulliver's Travels? Dante's Inferno? Your further suggestions are welcome.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 27, 2006 at 04:52 AM in Travels | Permalink
Comments
This is a lovely book:
Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah
by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Posted by: Luis Enrique at Jun 27, 2006 6:37:05 AM
I don't know about the 'best ever' but here are some favorites not already listed: "An African in Greenland", "South", "Following the Equator", "Sailing Alone Around the World", "West with the Night", "Over the Edge of the World", "Notes from a Small Island", "Song of the Dodo"
Posted by: Slocum at Jun 27, 2006 8:34:10 AM
"Seven Years In Tibet" by Heinrich Harrer is riveting, particularly if one is travelling through Tibet.
Posted by: Shiraz Allidina at Jun 27, 2006 8:40:26 AM
And, and... what about Rebecca West's 'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'. A classic, if ever a one there was.
Posted by: MattF at Jun 27, 2006 8:46:59 AM
Missing "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" by Laurie Lee is pretty odd.
Posted by: dsquared at Jun 27, 2006 9:11:32 AM
"On the Road" may not be a true travelogue, but it has inspired countless directionless road trips.
Posted by: Steven R at Jun 27, 2006 9:14:35 AM
The list seems to have no books on Mexico. Does anyone know of any good works on that country, particularly the Oaxaca region?
Posted by: Robert at Jun 27, 2006 10:10:03 AM
As long as we're being creative, Calvino's Invisible Cities deserves a mention.
Posted by: Jason Kuznicki at Jun 27, 2006 10:43:26 AM
National Geographic Travler just posted a similar list:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/travellibrary/library.html
Posted by: Ted Craig at Jun 27, 2006 10:47:07 AM
And may I recommend a non-traditional travel book?
Translating LA: A Tour of the Rainbow City by Peter Theroux
Not really a travel book per se, but the author, who comes from a family of travel writers, takes the approach to offer commentary on his adopted hometown.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Jun 27, 2006 10:51:09 AM
Jason, wouldn't Invisible Cities sort of be the anti-travel book?
No mention at all of Henry James' travelogues, nor Goethe's Italian Journey. And what about Journey to the Western Islands?
I guess more creatively you could add The Odyssey; would the latter half of Lolita count?
Posted by: NCA at Jun 27, 2006 12:41:43 PM
platform by houellebecq
Posted by: anon at Jun 27, 2006 1:07:14 PM
Abroad by Paul Fussell could be a contender for the list.
Posted by: Bill Stepp at Jun 27, 2006 1:11:58 PM
Boy, what ISNT on that list!
News from Tartary, Peter Fleming;
Full Tilt, Dervla Murphy;
Anything by Jonathan Raban
Anything by Redmond O'Hanlan
Lost Continent and Neither Here nor There, Bill Bryson (though nothing else)
Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon;
Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan, John L Stephens
Time Among the Maya, Ronald Wright
The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Girrard
When the Going Was Good, Evelyn Waugh
Was Bruce Chatwin on the list? Must have been and I missed it. Laurence Sterne? Sir Richard Francis Burton?
Recent reads I thought were excellent include:
Among Muslims, Kathleen Jamie
The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Sierstad
Posted by: tb at Jun 27, 2006 1:22:50 PM
Jason, wouldn't Invisible Cities sort of be the anti-travel book?
Not at all. It's only participating in a long tradition of travel-where-you-are books, one pioneered by de Maistre's Voyage autour de ma chambre (A Voyage Around My Room) published in the late 18th century.
Posted by: Jason Kuznicki at Jun 27, 2006 2:26:01 PM
I nominate Dark Star, by Paul Theroux.
Posted by: Miracle Max at Jun 27, 2006 3:20:21 PM
Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back
Posted by: rp at Jun 27, 2006 3:46:30 PM
My favorite would have to be "Paddling My Own Canoe" by Audrey Sullivan. Hard to find, but worth it.
If you're going to suggest Gulliver or The Inferno, then how can you exclude Tolkein?
Posted by: Chris Hibbert at Jun 27, 2006 3:51:00 PM
Dark Star Saffari.
Posted by: TJIC at Jun 27, 2006 6:04:34 PM
Moby Dick
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Jun 27, 2006 7:16:30 PM
A few more:
Danziger's Travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers by Nick Danziger (an idiot, but an entertaining one...)
And the third greatest traveler of them all (after Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo), Sir Richard Francis Burton, near-discoverer of the source of the Nile, first infidel to get to Mecca, translator of the unexpurged thousand and one nights, and British diplomat who never stayed at his consular post long before he set out for another adventure. I suggest his biography, since he's a bit wordy as a writer :)
Posted by: David Zetland at Jun 27, 2006 8:10:46 PM
forgot this one: Into a Desert Place: A 3000 Mile Walk Around the Coast of Baja California by Graham Mackintosh (a man constantly in the debt of strangers due to his inability to take care of himself...)
Posted by: David Zetland at Jun 27, 2006 8:13:09 PM
Waugh's "Robbery Under Law" is one you in particular would benefit from reading.
The Periplus of Hanno, an account of the sailing voyages around Africa of a 6th century BC Carthiginian.
Marvin Sheblick's "This Water Smells Funny (and I Don't Mean Ha-Ha)", an eccentric's journal of his ill-fated trip down the Cuyahoga River by paddle boat in the late 1960's.
Posted by: Carter at Jun 27, 2006 8:26:51 PM
"The Ends of the Earth" by Robert Kaplan
"Adventure Capitalist" by Jim Rogers
Posted by: Bristlecone at Jun 27, 2006 9:19:28 PM
On a lighter note check out Thank You and OK! An American Zen Failure in Japan by David Chadwick.
Posted by: Dr.Cornelius at Jun 28, 2006 2:53:46 AM
