Hey,
I’m fly fishing in Montana from Friday to Wednesday and looking for something to read on the flights and in the evenings on the deck.
For me, the perfect vacation book is light without being insipid. Something you can read after a long day of fishing and maybe too much sun. I’m a sucker for the kind of nonfiction that started life as a long magazine article and then was expanded into a book. The kind of “accessible” history that drives my history prof friend into a rage.
I also like a true crime book, but I have a weird hangup: in order for me to enjoy it, everyone involved has to have died long ago. I don’t like reading a true crime book and thinking about the victim’s mom having to see the author talking about it on TV, or whatever. So Lizzie Borden good, but some horrific murder last year bad, if that makes sense.
Books I consider perfect vacation books:
Devil in the White City and all of Larsen’s other books
The Match King
The Lost City of Z
Night of the Grizzlies
You might try some of Hampton Sides’ books. I recently read “Hellhound on his Trail”, which is about the hunt for MLK’s killer. Very well researched and reads like a novel.
Disastrous expeditions and explorations, along with general survival stories are my favorite reads. This interest was sparked when I read “White Nile”, about the various explorations for the source of the river by several ill-fated British men. I’ve read several books about polar exploration, including the riveting journey of Shackleton and crew to Antarctica, and the horror that was the John Franklin exploration of the Arctic.
Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm. A good book to read on a Montana fishing vacation – or any other vacation.
The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost. I re-read this when I take vacations to the coast. Be prepared to be heartbroken at the utter level of filth and poverty the natives of Kiribati live in.
Mary Celeste by Paul Begg. A good overview of the Mary Celeste mystery without fanwanking the outlandish theories (aliens, time travel, etc.) while also going into a bit of the ship’s pre- and subsequent history.
Survivng the Extremes, by Ken Kamler. This one’s a bit different. Kamler is an MD and adventure junkie who has joined several/many expeditions to remote locales as the expedition doctor. In that capacity he’s treated all manner of illness and injury, all occurring miles away from any hospital or clinic. He recounts many of those incidents in the book and discusses why some people make it out alive and some die of seemingly innocuous injuries or maladies.
Dig, by Frank Clune. It’s about the Burke and Wills expedition which, if you are unfamiliar with it, was an attempt to map part of the interior of Australia between Melbourne and the Gulf of Carpentaria ca. 1860. Think the Lewis and Clark expedition but led by unprepared morons. I confess it’s been a handful of years since I’ve read this one but I remember it being an absolutely wonderful book about a very sad tale.
And since you asked for my opinion on fiction, I’ll throw in Bucking the Sun by Ivan Doig. Historical fiction, northern Montana… it has it all. Plus, it’s Doig – he never wrote a stinker.
The second post in this thread had a recommendation for Confederates In The Attic by Tony Horwitz. He also wrote Spying On The South about a trip he took retracing the path of Frederick Law Olmstead’s trips around the antebellum South, which is a good read.