BootsnAll Travel Community

Okay, someone must have asked this before but I don't see it anywhere recently.

What was the first book you read that made you want to travel or inspired you to do it?

I had known for a while that I wanted to travel, but when I got ahold of Susan Griffith's Work Your Way Around the World, I was like "yes, it can be done."

Anyone else?

The Good Earth

by Pearl S. Buck

"The Drifters" by Michener

"Illusions" by Richard Bach

Early books... probably the Roald Dahl books I read, and Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. Especially as a kid in elementary school, they made the world seem big. More recently, Hemingway always makes me want to travel, even when he's describing a war zone.

I'd already travelled as a child, but knew myself as a traveller when I read the Moomin books by Tove Jansson, especially "Comet in Moominland"

I still feel a kinship with the travelling wanderer of the series, Snufkin. That is my man. He travels light, smokes a pipe, plays harmonica and moves with the seasons.

Oh there are so many! Thats the whole point of books, they take you to another place! The books that made it more of a reality for me were series about different climates. The first one or two came out when I was in elementary school and the illustrator came to our school (my mom became friends with her and asked her to visit a couple times). When she came she'd read the stories and that was all good but afterwards I listened to her talking to my mom about the places she had gone to and what travelling was like. I'd ask her silly kid questions in complete awe, such as "you really went there?" It was cool to have someone "step out of the book" and talk to me about it.
I give you Barbara Lavallee
and her books This Place is Wet and This Place is Cold
She's a well known Alaskan artist. If you've been there; you've seen her stuff.
The great Alaskan children's book classic Mama, Do You Love Me?

Its an older post but an interesting topic....I'd like to add Tony Horwitz's "Baghdad Without a Map", it's fresh in my mind as I have just finished another thoroughly entertaining book by the same author entitled "Confederates in the Attic"...

Song of the Dodo by David Quammen.

It's a pop sci book on island biogeography. A really great book. It makes me want to travel the world, and see distinct wildlife in their habitats (before it all disappears). It also inspired me to work in the wildlife conservation field.

I guess probably two spring to mind...

"On the Road" Jack Kerouac

and teh rather cheesy answer... "The Beach" Alex Gar...oh you know who it is anyway.

Can I pick a magzine? National Geographic, hands down.

Jesus' Son, by Denis Johnson.

Great book that mirrors much of the way I view travel and general life experience. Its sort of like a 70s-80s version of On the Road for ex-junkies and barflies. They made it into a movie starring Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Jack Black, Denis Hopper, Denis Leary, and Holly Hunter. The book is pretty short, everyone should read it.

"The Hobbit"

" For the road goes ever on.."

So I just finished this book by Ann Vanderhoof. It was called "An Embarrassment of Mangoes" I bought it for 2.99 in a dump bin by the cash register at CHAPTERS. I didn't hold much hope for it, but Ann's name rang a bell.

It's a story of how she and her husband sold everything, bought a sailboat and sailed around the Caribbean for two years. It was a great story, and she has a great voice for telling it. Very enjoyable.

The kicker is that it's a story of her journey...and a cookbook of all of the Caribbean recipes she found. Give it a try.

"The Beach" by Alex Garland. I am going to get myself to Thailand now that I've read it.

"The Drifters" by James Michener...been wanting to see Spain ever since...

Keeping in tradition with Mina Olen, I would say Herge's "Tintin" series instilled a sort of wanderlust in me as a child. My stepmother was from Brussels and she had the entire original collection in French and she would read them to me as bedtime stories. I really want to learn French so I can go back and read the originals again on my own.

Forgive me, it was not a book that inspired me but a crude blog written in the late 90s by my friend's sister who quit her job and hiked the Appalachian Trail. Every few weeks she would enter a town and mail a letter to her sister who would type it up on the internet.

Every day when I got to work, I'd close my office door to keep everyone away and pour over her very detailed log. I was hooked and thus the began the RTW trip plans.

As a child, what got me interested in travel were also Tintin and my dad's National Geographics magazines! But the book that lit the flame was Wizard of Oz. I know, wierd.

Oh yes -- National Geographic magazine...I love(d) those.

My grandmother had every single issue from the beginning of time. I can recall a particular one, though, over which I poured obsessively. I am sure that you know it - the issue about Vesuvius with the photos of the half buried skeletons and the gold jewelry. I fell in love with the world after reading that article and looking at those photos.

Books, though? Three: The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Up the Santa Fe Trail, and the XIT Ranch of Texas.