BootsnAll Travel Community

As mentioned in other threads, we can't always make everyone happy with our travel writing. What style of writing gets you buying the last minute ticket to far flung lands? Are you a guidebook only kid or stuck on short stories? Do you like articles with a historical bent? Let it all out here!

Me, I prefer to travel with a guidebook but don't like to read them as they are almost always out of date as well as specific to a certain style of travel:
- Lonely Planet for the party girl
- Rough Guides for the sites, languages and city guides
- Michelin for the walking tours

If I am sitting down with a good book be it at home or on the commute to work, I want something that literally takes me somewhere. This is when I get into historically relevent travel writing - Tony Horwitz' Into the Blue: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before has saved me from many a boring commute. I prefer to learn the history of a country as when I eventually go there I don't want to be that traveller that says "You mean Australia has states?"

Then of course there are the novels that cross that fine line between travel writing and literature. William Burroughs takes us with him on his journey into Mexico in Junky though I wouldn't want to retrace his steps. However his journalistic style tells a much more interesting story than "I stayed at this hotel and had dinner at xyz."

So who inspires you to travel? What is your preferred travel writing style?

I'm honestly not a huge fan of travel narratives or reading guidebooks for anything other than info or time-killing on a long bus ride.

Good fiction set in a foreign land is what gets me inspired to travel. Books like Love in the Age of Cholera, The Beach, or even The Da Vinci Code, make me want to visit the places they were set in.

Also, tales of epic journeys (Lord of the Rings, On The Road) cause the old wanderlust to kick in.

A good travel story must include both descriptions of places visited, without becoming a dry narrative of facts and figures, and also a story that allows the reader to imagine him/herself there. Therefore it is essentual that the story is not so ego centric that the reader has trouble relating to it. In novels it is different, there you have sympathy with the main character. In travel storys however what I feel for the narrator is mostly envy, I´m thinking lucky bastard, I´ll tolerate you so long as you take me there too.

Cool topic delara ~

As a reader and as a writer, I like literary travelogues by interesting people to interesting places. If we could stretch the term travelogue to encompass all kinds of journeys-- scientific, sociological, creative, spiritual, historical etc --it generally becomes creative non-fiction, which is writing I enjoy for fun and for study.

But when I need a roof over my head and a pot to piss in, I am quite grateful for the "guidebook hack" who points me to a decent hostel. And while these writers names dont last in my memory, I sure wouldnt mind having their jobs, at least for a little while ~

The literary stuff is more creatively rewarding, but the journalistic style is easier for me b/c of my training and the efficacy of having a deadline and a paycheck dangling in front of you. My experience is not so much as a travel writer, but it is in features, and I think you get more immediate perks as a journalist vs. as an aspiring literary author, but I could be wrong about that.

Blog writing (which could be used to publish any style of travel writing or recombine into a new one) is becoming a fast favorite of mine; there is so much crap out there, but when it is done well and you are following on someone's adventures, you feel an immediacy and excitement and inspiration that other styles cant touch. It's cool, gotta give it up to people who add that responsibility to their travels~ they make it look easy ~

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In travel storys however what I feel for the narrator is mostly envy, I´m thinking lucky bastard, I´ll tolerate you so long as you take me there too.

Thor, I really like that. It's so true, isn't it? It's easy to be inspired to travel somewhere after seeing a photograph. Who doesn't want to go to Everest base camp after seeing a photo from a friend who's been? Instant envy. However, most of the books and stories I've read usually don't shed the most enviable light upon the mountain (death, injury, frostbite, delerium)... I completely agree, a truly great travel story will make you want to be there; and even perhaps do it better than they did.

Blog writing can be insipidly tedious though. I get annoyed with myself sometimes and can't write; although that's because I have nothing to say or am too busy. When it is this pretty outside I'd rather be just that - outside. Blogging is a great form of instant gratification, but I've found them to get old if there is nothing new to say. Like when a trip stops. What then?

I'm also a big fan of travel writers who make me laugh. But not the gratuitous kind, you know, the writer who has to make every other line a witty jab. The self deprecating thing gets old after a while. If I wanted self deprecating I'd talk about myself, not read a road novel.

I'm a big fan of the Traveler's Tales series of books. I've read a whole bunch of them and really like the the feel. They are anthologies on a certain topic so you get a lot of different voices chiming in on a certain place or subject.

I also like travel humor. Jen Leo's bra and panties series cracks me up. Also like Bill Bryson because he digs deep into a topic and discusses history, social aspects and does it all with great humor. I also like the classics, too. Right now I'm reading Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad." Very interesting to read about tourism from the 19th century.

I also like historical fiction that evokes a sense of place. My favorite of the genre are the Marcus Didius Falco mystery books that are set in the First Century AD in the Roman Empire. Falco travels all over in his sometimes reluctant persuit of justice. He is contemptuous of the icky winters in barbaric Britania. He endures bad road food while traveling through Gaul. Delivers his daughter in Espana. Whitnesses a crime at the ruins of Petra, and then travels all over the Middle East with his patrician wife, Helena. His brother-in-law is fed to the lions in north Africa. Of couse the place where he is best suited is Rome, his home. A great series of books and very funny, too.

Jet