For all my life, I’ve been a traveler and a reader. In 2010 I decided to put the two things together and so I created this reading project for myself: for each destination I visit, I draw a reading list of books set there and after the visit I write a post about how the reading influenced my travel experience, and how the visit influenced my reading of those books. And I get to share pictures from my travels, too. See my original post about the project here.
As you can see, I even created a button (with my non-existing graphic skills that’s the best I could come up with). It is based on a beautiful picture by Calsidyrose I found on Flickr, which I am now using as header image on this page too. If you know anything about vintage compasses, please click through and see if you can answer the author’s questions. Thank you.
Below you’ll find my posts for past travels, and my plans for the future, as well as some resources to find books based on location. If you have any suggestion to add to my reading lists, please do let me know, via the comments here or via email.
Want to try the “Travel With Books” experience yourself? Feel free to do so, and I’ll be glad to either host your guest post on my blog or just add a link to your post here, whichever you prefer. All I ask is that if you use the button, please upload the image to your own server and link back to this page.
My travels:
- Greece (January 2011)
- Vienna (August 2011)
- Lisbon (November 2011)
- Norway (December 2011)
- Rome (January 2012)
- Gibraltar (January 2012)
Already booked:
None at present
Plans for the future
Israel
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography
- Flavius Josephus, The Fall of Jerusalem
South Africa
- Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country
- J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
Andalusia
- Robert Wilson, The Blind Man of Sevilla
- Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra
Victoria Hislop, The Return- Ildefonso Falcones, La mano di Fatima
Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book
Andorra
- Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, Mr. S and the Secrets of Andorra’s Box
Iceland
- Arnaldur Indridason, Tainted Blood
- Arnaldur Indridason, La voce
- Dustin Long, Icelander
- Betsy Tobin, Ice Land
- Margaret Elphinstone, The Sea Road
Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the EarthSjon, The Blue Fox
Tibet/Nepal
- João Gonçalo Fonseca e Valérie Fonseca, Pedalar Devagar
- Jamyang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Great Detective in India and Tibet (aka: Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years)
- Colin Thubron, To a Mountain in Tibet
- José Rodrigues dos Santos, A Formula de Deus
Resources:
- WhichBook gives you book recommendations based on setting, among a series of other parameters
- PackABook is a database which is based on the same idea as this project of mine, more or less (not all countries are featured yet, but it is expanding)
- BiblioTravel is another database, including lots of genres, locations and authors
- GoodReads has lots of discussions on different locations (I found many of them with a simple Google Search)
- Helen, who hosts the 2012 Middle East Reading Challenge, put together quite a list of books set in ME/North African countries
- Swapna, who has been hosting the South East Asia Reading Challenge for some years, is putting together a review database of books set in the countries included in her challenge, i.e. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives.
