Welcome readers,
September 27 was [World Tourism Day](https://www.unwto.org/world-tourism-day)! To celebrate, we’re discussing our favorite travel literature! Please us this thread to discuss your favorite travel books and authors.
If you’d like to read our previous weekly discussions of fiction and nonfiction please visit the [suggested reading](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/r/booksrecommends) section of our [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/index).
Thank you and enjoy!
by AutoModerator
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I love all of Mark Twain’s travelogues but ‘The Innocents Abroad’ is my favorite of the bunch.
Bruce Chatwin really reinvented travel literature in the late 70s, early 80s with In Patagonia and Songlines. He deserved to have a long and adventurous career sharing his experiences all over the world with us, except he was an early victim of the AIDS virus. He left us with two stunning masterpieces and I guess that will have to be enough. Though I worry he is being forgotten, so I hope some of you pickup his books and discover him anew. You won’t be disappointed.
Will always have a soft spot for Frances Mayes’ *Under The Tuscan Sun.* It has such a poet’s sensibility. I was kind of dismayed by the movie if only because it was the worst possible ad for the memoir. I can’t imagine that the audience who enjoyed the film and the audience who enjoyed the book would have much overlap.
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher’s *As They Were* is also a favorite. And I did like Peter Mayle’s Provence books.
I really enjoyed The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. It was essentially a grumpy man riding around the world on a train, but for some reason it was what I needed at the time. It gave me a glimpse of a world that I’m too young to have known. I tried to read the follow-up earlier this year, but it didn’t jive with me. Maybe the time isn’t right yet.
Tim Moore’s travel books have often made me laugh aloud. Much funnier to me at least than Bryson’s.
A couple of striking ones from a century or so ago: *Arabia Felix* by Thorkild Hansen and *Journey to the Land of the Real* by Victor Segalen.
Less straightforward but wonderful ones are the likes of the two translated ones by Jean-Paul Kauffmann and *On the Road to Babadag* by Andrzej Stasiuk. The latter calls to mind *In Another World: Europe’s Dying Villages* by Tom Pow, also a good one.
*Autonauts of the Cosmoroute* by Cortazar is the most endearing and because of its background the most poignant of travel books.
My favourite though is like some of those others not without a fictional element: *Mobile*, by Michel Butor.
I greatly enjoyed Albert Podell’s *Around the World in 50 Years*.