Monday

Top 10 Literary Travel Books of 2010

One of the pleasures of travel is reading a good book set in the country you are visiting. A well-written book adds context to the things that you are seeing everyday and allows you to understand more of the culture. David Bennett at Quillcards, left a comment on this blog when talking about how learning about a country enhances your experience of it. He used the phrase “knowledge puts depth into a flat landscape,” which I think is a great way to sum it up. In that vein, I present our family’s top 10 Literary Travel books of 2010, books that most enhanced our travel experience. (present day country in parentheses)

#1: Birds Without Wings, by Louis de Bernieres (Turkey): I can think of few fictional books that combine a great story with a complete history lesson, the lesson in this case, the Ottoman Empire's collapse and Turkey’s entry into the modern world just after World War I. There are twists, turns, paradoxes, dilemmas, contradictions and all of them set amongst story that won't allow you to put the book down.

#2: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mafouz (Egypt): A story of intersecting lives amongst the impoverished class in the heart of Islamic Cairo, Nobel Prize winner Mafouz tells a great story and made us feel like another dimension was added to the people we met while in Egypt. We were inspred to visit the eponymous alley while in Cairo.

#3: The Last Days of The Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie (Peru): A complete story of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. The initial battle scene of Pizarro and Atuhualpa in Cajamarca and the siege on Cusco are fascinating.  Almost nothing remains in Cajamarca, so reading this book was essential to understanding this northern Peru city.

#4: The Agony and the Ecstasy, by Irving Stone (Italy): The fictional biography of Michelangelo’s life, Stone does a solid job of giving the reader insight into the mind of a master sculptor. We read this prior to spending a month in Florence.

#5: Pompeii, by Robert Harris (Italy): Harris gives the reader a sense of the chaos, confusion and politics that accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius, told from the point of view of the engineer responsible for the aqueducts. As we walked through the Pompeii ruins, we thought about the widespread panic portrayed in the book.

#6: The Camel Bookmobile, by Masha Hamilton (Kenya): The story of a New York woman who helps bring books to a remote Kenyan village on the Sudanese border. As we drove through the remote Kenyan countryside, we had a better idea of what went on in each of the villages. This book raised a question that our kids had not thought about before: Is literacy always a good thing?

#7: Death In The Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru): A story about some killings in a remote Andean community. The police are sure it was the work of the Sendero Luminoso but the locals suspect pishtacos (mythological boogeyman). A great introduction to the two main sides of the Peruvian character.

#8: Voyage Of The Beagle, by Charles Darwin (South America, the Galapagos): Darwin’s account of his South American voyage, where many of his ideas about evolution and natural selection were formed. I found it interesting how he relentlessly compared and categorized the things that he saw.

#9: Incantation, by Alice Hoffman (Spain): A story about a young teenage girl who slowly finds out that she is Jewish during the time of the Inquisition. The book gave our kids a good idea of what that would be like.

#10: Julius Caesar, by Phillip Freeman (Italy): A solid biography of Julius Caesar that highlights his military prowess and his ability to motivate his soldiers.

17 comments:

  1. Hi Jason!

    Thanks for the recommendation! It’s a pity that the list didn’t mention any book about India, my next destination…

    Cheers!

    Isabel

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  2. Hi Isabel,
    We don't have any books from India because India wasn't on the itinerary this time. You can't go wrong with Scott's "Jewel in the Crown," part of the "Raj Quartet."
    Have fun in India.
    Jason

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  3. Love The Agony and the Ecstasy... also of Stone's novel about Van Gogh - covering lots of territory in Holland and France, "Lust for Life." Thanks for these!

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  4. Still have the Inca book on my list, now I just need to find an English bookstore that sells it!

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  5. Some excellent books here - and some I haven't heard about. Thanks for the recommendations; very useful.

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  6. Oh, and Isabel - for India I highly recommend William Dalrymple's City of Djinns (about Delhi). Come to think of it, I recommend all his books.

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  7. Hi Jason,
    Great list here.

    If you love books about travel, you might enjoy checking out Vera Marie's blog: A Traveler's Library
    http://atravelerslibrary.com/

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  8. Margo,
    Lust for life is a good recommendation. Have you seen the movies? Kirk douglas as Van Gogh and Charleton Heston as Michelangelo...can't get any more Hollywood than that!
    Jason

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  9. Ayngelina,
    If you are in Cusco or Lima, try the SA Explorers club...they both have good selections.
    Jason

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  10. Sophie,
    Thanks. The Camel BookMobile and Incantation I had not heard of either...we found them on exchange bookshelves in Lima and Cairo, respectively. It's great when interesting books just cross your path when you are ready to read them.
    Jason

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  11. Nancie,
    Good recommendation. I check out Vera's site often and I've done a guest post there as well.
    Jason

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  12. Great list Jason. I'll have to add some of these to my 2011 reading.

    One book I read in 2010 that I loved was "A Female Nomad"....true story about a woman who moved to Bali in here late 40's and totally embraced the culture. (Sorry, her name escapes me at the moment). Well worth a read.

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  13. Interesting list! The only one I've read is Birds without Wings so I'll look out for the others. Naguib Mahfouz's trilogy has been on my shelf for while, but I've been putting it off because it's so long.

    I just read Santiago Roncagliolo's Red April, which was excellent. From the sounds of it, the story is a bit similar to Death in the Andes.

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  14. Hi Lucy,
    Red April sounds interesting...I will check it out.
    Jason

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  15. Hi Jason,
    Thank you very much for the mention - and the link - very much appreciated.

    Quite a list - the period around the turn of the 20th century in the Middle East must have been quite something with the bankrupt Ottoman Empire and the European powers vying for influence - so I am going to have a go at your first recommendation.

    For an alternate view of history in the region, there is the series of YouTube videos - google for Rob Newman and the History of Oil - he's a comedian with a mission.

    I recall reading The Last Days Of The Incas while in Cajamarca and standing in the square imagining the events - quite chilling and such a comment on people.

    @Isabel - You might want to take a look at Jawaharlal Nehru's 'The Discovery of India' written while he was in prison. He shows how India really stood in the world before the British got their hands on it. It's a big book though, so maybe something to read beforehand. I was recommended to it while we were in India and I hemmed and hawed over buying it - but he writes like a poet and shows India's influence from way before the time of the Egyptians right the way through - such a lot of thought and experience that I took before reading this book to have originated elsewhere is all traced back to strong threads of understanding in India.

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  16. Fantastic book, because I love to travel and the fragments and stories that are dumped here are very interesting.
    Those best travel experiences, something that every traveler should have or keep in memory.
    I have records of every trip I make, but I think I never dare to do or to translate those ideas into a book like this.
    Congratulations.

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  17. Travel books assist you as a great companion during your travel to various destinations as you can learn a lot about the concerned places you are planning on visiting. Take one along whenever you intend to travel the next time.

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