Recommended reading for the road

[climberjohn]

Danziger's Travels
Best travel book I've EVER read:
http://www.nickdanziger.com/index/books/danzigers-travels/

Blue Highways
a classic.

long steven king or john grisham novels on MP3 from audible.com for long road trips.

-Cj
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'86 Westy, 2.5 Subaru power
Know your limits. Exceed them often.

[juanb]

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, by Julio Cortazar.

Cortazar and his wife drove the less than 500 miles from Paris to Marseille in his Bay Window Westy, stopping at every rest stop, and taking about 30 days. It's a very playful, silly book, and being a big fan of Cortazar's, it's one of the things that made me want a Westy.

Here is a blurb:

http://quarterlyconversation.com/autonauts-of-the-cosmoroute-by-julio-cortazar-revie

j
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1989 Westy AT, 2.2 GoWesty.
We drove it to Argentina: http://www.vanenvan.com

[debbiej]

I vowed to never own a kindle or nook or anything that tried to replace a book. but now I have one, and love it. download books before a trip. many are free, and you can read in the dark....

[seanjenn]

Education of a Wandering Man: Louis L'Amour

Puddin' Head Wilson: Mark Twain
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1987 GL Sunroof
2.1 4 spd

[bosruten]

[Syncronicity]

What a timely thread. Received a Kindle Fire for Christmas. Will be bringing 100s of books along on future road trips. Looking forward to more recommendations.
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Tom, Juanita, Iggy & Abbey the Dirty Desert Dogs
2.1 L 87 Syncro
KD0ALU
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[seanjenn]

[sub-hatchtim]

anything!! written by Paulo Cahelo
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58' pg/sg silo fridge westy
58 Dove blue singlecab
76 911S

[yeti@home]

Hmmm. Travels with Charley. Steinbeck was bitter and pretty far in the bottle. Good book even so.
Hmmm. Blue Highways. Least Heat Moon had just gone through a bad divorce and wasn't in a very good mood. Good book, even so.
Then I found Out West by Dayton Duncan. Finally someone doing a big trip who wasn't pissed off. Great book, really.
Also anything by Wallace Stegner. But especially his book of short stories, Marking the Sparrow's Fall, is a complete treasure. Makes me want to go West again; ASAP.
Allen

[Saguache]

"Outposts", "The Map that Changed the Word", and "Krakatoa" all by Simon Winchester.

Started with audio books of these, but am enjoying them on Kindle too
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Matt Thyer
http://zenoswagen.wordpress.com/

[Mark Lewalski]

Sailing being one of my other interests...

Sailing Alone Around the World - Joshua Slocum

Got it from a friend and ended up reading it during a business trip. Amazing journey in under 200 pages.

X2 on A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson

His trip on the Appalachian Trail with a buddy. Whets your appetite to get outside.

and if you can find them...

The Quiller series books by Adam Hall

Cold War spy thrillers with action scenes written like nothing I had ever encountered before.

Mark
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'89 Vanagon GL Wolfsburg "Bluestar" (given to and owned by my son now)
'87 Vanagon Weekender
'74 Thing

[WestyBob]

All of the above plus I'll throw in a few ....

If you're into the early hippie thing then "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" about Kesey and Wavy Gravy's trip in Further.

If you're searching for spirituality but not religion try "A Joseph Campbell Companion" reader ... an amalgam of the commonality of the human experience everywhere as represented in myth and art from the beginning of human existence based on his life-long research.

If you like western facts then anything by Greg Michno such as "The Deadliest Indian War in the West" and "A Fate Worse Than Death".

Or you can try Richard Grant's "God's Middle Finger" ... an account of his journalistic investigation deep into the Sierra Madres, alleged base of the drug lords.

[climberjohn]

SOT (Slightly Off Topic) . . .

For you Kindle fans, keep in mind that every "book" you buy from Amazon is another nail in the coffin of your friendly neighborhood book store. When bookstores go extinct, and Amazon (or a similar single corporation) effectively owns the sales and distribution of almost all digital books, that will be a very, very sad day.

-CJ
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'86 Westy, 2.5 Subaru power
Know your limits. Exceed them often.

[droogvan]

[Syncronicity]

[kurt vonnagon]

1951, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye we all have a little Holden in us.

[RBEmerson]

Sorry but I can't resist. Slocum needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It helps to know some of his back story (professional captain, for example). The circumnavigation was impressive but it's clear he wasn't adverse to ...ah... tuning his story a bit. Ditto for L'Amour, who was ...um... shall we say not adverse to self-promotion? Finally, Bryson... I've tried to like Bryson. And I just can't do it. His Appalachian Trail tale is... well... it's just plain whiny. C'mon, Bill, put your big boy boots on and hike the AT or shut up.

So what to read in place of the above? Robert Louis Stevenson! This man was a serious traveler (check out his bio!). "Treasure Island" is still as good a read as ever. Ditto for "Kidnapped" and "Black Arrow". And if you can find the editions illustrated by Howard Pyle, so much the better. (Hint: check out Dover's catalog) While on Pyle and Dover, check out his Robin Hood and other "knights and fair ladys" storys - good stories and great artwork, too!

For sea stories, Erskin Childers' "The Riddle of the Sands" is one of the first spy stories written. Set in the period prior to WWI, it was both an excellent novel and a civil servant's admonition to the British Foreign Office to watch more closely the danger Germany presented. Consider, too, Childers' own story, a tragic tale involving the Irish revolution - "A Thirst for the Sea". And, back to "Riddle", look for Sam Llewellen's "The Shadow in the Sands" which continues Childers' "Riddle" story. Llewellen's sea stories are somewhat like Dick Francis gone to sea or maybe closer to Jack Higgins' sea stories (also good reads!). (Higgins' earlier "fighting the Nazis" stories are now somewhat dated but good stories, his later stories, usually involving the SAS in some way, just don't do as well for me)

Sterling Hayden's "Wanderer" is a good personal account. I do not recommend his "Neptune's Car," which is on the short list of books I just couldn't bring myself to finish.

Finally, there's always C. S Forester's Hornblower series. I know some folks get all fanboy about Patrick O'Brian. IMNSHO, O'Brian (as he styled himself - he wasn't even forthright about his name) wished he was Forester. Anyway, "The African Queen", "The Good Shepard", "Rifleman Dodd" (best of luck finding this one - although it may be found paired with "The Gun", not one of my fave Forester stories), are far better stories. And for those wanting to know about some of the back story to the period of Hornblower, et al., read Forester's "The Age of Fighting Sail".
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Lord, give me coffee to change the things I can change, and wine to accept the things I can't change.

[IdahoDoug]

Random cool "which book to read" story that happened to me. About 10 years ago my wife and I towed our boat to Roosevelt Lake in N. Washington State for the first time. We took the back way. A fire station was having a fund raiser garage sale and locals had donated stuff to sell. I bought a small box of books. Once in the water, I reached in and randomly grabbed a book which turned out to be the true story of the Thompson - explorer that REALLY explored the Pacific NorthWest before Louis & Clark "discovered" the area (they had his map with them...).

The story winds all over the huge territory. On about the 3rd evening, I am reading that they are going through a canyon but spending the night on one side at a primitive French trading house. We were anchored in a small bay, and had passed it up looking for a place to spend the night before turning around and coming back to it. I suddenly realized that where we turned around was a tiny bridge with a landmark historical building on one end of it. Yes, that building was the road house. We were sleeping a few hundred yards from the spot in the random book I was reading described, and I had randomly arrived at this spot in the book.

Wild, eh?

DougM
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1987 2WD Wolfsburg Vanagon Weekender "Mango", two fully locked 80 Series LandCruisers. 2017 Subaru Outback boxer. 1990 Audi 90 Quattro 20V with rear locking differential, 1990 burgundy parts Vanagon. 1984 Porsche 944, 1988 Toyota Supra 5 speed targa, 2002 BMW 325iX, 1982 Toyota Sunrader

[RBEmerson]

Er, perhaps not so random?
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Lord, give me coffee to change the things I can change, and wine to accept the things I can't change.

[John Sullivan]

RB, You like Hornblower. Try Alexander Kent's Bolitho series. More books and great adventures. Tales about the English Navy from the late 1700 to early 1800. Great stories.