Bill Bryson’s In A Sunburned Country. He travelled more like a human being and less like a character in a book.
In Pategonia was good, but I thought *Songlines *was better.
The Places In Between by Rory Stewart is supposed to be very good (I haven’t read it).
That’s the one I would nominate, but travel isn’t exactly my literary niche.
I loved both of those books, although it took me a while to get into the rhythm of his writing.
I also enjoyed his PrairyErth (A Deep Map), in which his travels are all within a single county in Kansas.
One of my faves is Holidays in Hell by P.J. O’Rourke.
Not quite the same as the books in Winchester’s list.
I’d nominate Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K Jerome (which I am currently reading) - it is a travel book, even though the travelling only consists of a few days of rowing up the river Thames.
Have you all forgotten Gulliver…man he sure got around
My two favourites to date have been McCarthy’s Bar and The Road to McCarthy by the sadly departed Pete of that ilk.
On a more pedestrian note, Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks is a good comic alternative, and the book to accompany The Long Way Round, the diaries of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman, is superb. The Wrong Way Home by Peter Moore is badly written but hilarious - he also wrote the ultimate backpacker’s anecdote book, No Shitting in the Toilet, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
I also liked The Great Railway Bazaar and Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux, whiny bitch though he be… Another case of “good if you can get over the personality of the writer” is Danziger’s Travels by Nick of the same name.
Blue Highways also rates a very high mention.
India: A Million Mutinies Now by VS Naipaul is heavy going but brutally enlightening.
The James Morris thing might be confused by the fact that James is now Jan. Her books on Hong Kong are without peer.
Not “top five ever,” but a darned good read – Blue Latitudes by Tony Horowitz – he retraces Captain Cook’s travels, and it’s about both Cook and his own adventures.
And I’ve mentioned Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley elsewhere on the boards – she was a proper English spinster who set out – alone – to travel in, duh, West Africa in the late 19th century.
(John Mace – you may be right about Songlines being better than In Patagonia – I read them both, damn, could it really be 30 years ago? – but it was In Patagonia that made me fall in love with Bruce Chatwin’s writing.)
To say nothing of the dog.
I would like to nominate Bill Bryson’s A Walk into the Woods. Makes me want to walk the Applachian Trail, almost.
I’ve been a Bill Bryson fan for many years, and kept hearing about this book called In A Sunburned Country, yet couldn’t find it in any book store here.
The reason? It was entitled Down Under for the Australian edition. :smack:
(And yes, I have a copy!)
Let me agree that all of Bryson’s travel books are excellent, and Holidays In Hell by P.J. O’Rourke is also a great read.
Not really “Travel Books” per se, but the excellent piss-takes Molvania: A Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry and Phaic Tan: Sunstroke On A Shoestring by the team at Jetlag Travel Guides are very, very funny and well worth reading…
OK, since my first slightly snarky reply I’ve been thinking about this. I’d almost argue we need one list for contemporary and one for non-contemporary however … in random order… my favourites, ones I can re-re-read
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
Speak to the Earth, Vivienne de Watteville
Crossing Open Ground, Barry Lopez (altho’ you could argue against this being ‘travel’)
Neither Here Nor There, Bill Bryson
Fragile Edge, Maria Coffey (it didn’t have the annoying subtitle in the original editions!)
I haven’t read Crossing Open Ground, but Arctic Dreams by the same author is an absolutely magnificent travel/nature book.
I liked A Walk in the Woods the best of the Bill Bryson books I’ve read, but all of them were good.
Theroux is a cranky bastard and, while it makes his books stand out, I don’t know that I always enjoy reading them.
I just want to give a shout-out to a great travel author I enjoyed as a kid, Richard Halliburton: author of Royal Road to Romance, Seven League Boots, New Worlds to Conquer, The Flying Carpet, The Glorious Adventure.
I agree. Do you have copies of all of them?
I was given a new copy of the “Royal Road to RomanceThe Glorious Adventure” (in one volume) as a young child, by a pair of spinster neighbor teachers and I still have it, as well as at least two copies of each of the above titles, plus “Richard Halliburton-His Story of His Life’s Adventure-As Told in Letters to His Mother and Father”, Bobbs-Merrill Co, 1940 (First Edition).
Then I had the fortune to spend two years on a navy ship homeported in the Mediterranean and visited many of the places in the books, including Baalbek, now under Hezbollah control in the Bekaa Valley, and the shrines opf each of 3 major religions in Jerusalem, all in the same day.
I now collect travel books, especially about the Med (50+) and have a couple dozen Baedecker’s guides from the early 20th c.
Latest read is “The World-Life and Travel 1950-2000” by Jan Morris. That’s the title on the front cover and spine but the title page says, “The World-Travels 1950-2000”.
Yes, I do – handed down from my father. First editions, I think.
I just thought of another author worth mentioning: Redmond O’Hanlon.
In Trouble Again and Into The Heart Of Borneo were wonderful. Now that you’ve reminded me, I have to seek out Trawler.
Even though we’re talking about books–can we include the texts written to accompany Michael Palin’s shows? They deserve honorable mention, at least.
Tales of the Alhambra - Washington Irving.
I’d also recommend “About This Life”, like “Crossing Open Ground” it is a collection of essays but each beautifully crafted. I think I’ll slip “Arctic Dreams” onto my Christmas list !