Book picks similar to
The Distance Between: A Travel Memoir by Mike McIntyre
travel
non-fiction
memoir
memoirs
Travels With Tinkerbelle - 6000 Miles Around France In A Mechanical Wreck
Susie Kelly - 2006
Like many simple plans it went wrong before it started and they ended up with two dogs and a campervan named Tinkerbelle. On the second day of their journey Tinkerbelle begins to self-destruct, helped by the new dog who does his best to eat her from the inside out. This is their story, as they travel from sandy beaches to snow-topped mountains exploring the diverse cultures, cuisines and countryside making up the country called France. Their journey takes them to places out of the ordinary, meeting interesting characters and witnessing ancient traditions. While the dogs rejoice in the freedom they find running on the beaches, Susie and Terry spend a lot of time holding their breath, wondering whether Tinkerbelle will manage to negotiate impossible mountain routes and get them home before she completely disintegrates. Travels with Tinkerbelle is a revision of "A Perfect Circle," previously published by Transworld Publishers. Enhanced features of this edition include chapter by chapter map links of the journey.
Ten Thousand Hours in Paradise: Arrival (True Hawaii Book 1)
Andrew M. Crusoe - 2018
Initially, he planned to stay only for the summer. Little did he know that he would stay for over ten thousand hours… Ten Thousand Hours in Paradise: Arrival is the first in a 3-volume adventure memoir about community, sustainability, and a life-changing journey on the Big Island of Hawaii. In Volume 1, Andrew gets a crash course in island life, joins a community which he soon learns has a dark side, and witnesses firsthand the power of the volcano goddess, the mythical creator of the islands themselves.
Faring to France on a Shoe
Valerie Poore - 2017
After eight years of owning their barge, Hennie-Ha, eight years involving catastrophe and crisis, Val and her partner finally go 'faring' to France for the first time. This travelogue is about the places they visit and the people they meet along the canals on their route from the Netherlands, through Belgium and into northern France. It tells a gentle story about how they experience their life on board during the four weeks they spent cruising. Written as a journal, it follows them on their travels through rain and shine and reveals how day by day, Val learns to cast aside the stresses and demands of her job and to appreciate life's simplest of pleasures to the full. And why 'Faring to France on a Shoe'? Well, download a sample and then all will be clear, or just have a 'look inside'!
'A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow': An American Hitchhiking Odyssey
Tim Brookes - 2000
Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Message From a Blue Jay - Love Loss and One Writer's Journey Home
Faye Rapoport DesPres - 2014
She is single, living in a rented house in Boulder, Colorado, and fitting dance classes and nature hikes between workdays at a software start-up that soon won t exist. While contemplating a sky still hazy from summer wildfires, she decides to take stock of her nomadic life and to find the real reasons she never settled down. The choices she makes from that moment on lead her to re-trace her steps both in the States and abroad as she attempts to understand her life. But instead of going back, she finds herself moving forward to new love, shocking loss, and finally, in a way that she never expects, to a place that she can almost call home.Readers who love the memoirs and personal essays of such rising contemporary writers as Cheryl Strayed, Joy Castro, and Kim Dana Kupperman, will appreciate Faye's observational eye, her passion for the natural world and the creatures that inhabit it, and her search for the surprising truths behind the events of our daily lives.
Just Don't Call Me Ma'am: How I Ditched the South, Forgot My Manners, and Managed to Survive My Twenties with (Most of) My Dignity Still Intact
Anna Mitchael - 2010
In fact, she may even be a lot like you. In her fast-moving world, she might be called on as a friend, coworker, daughter, girlfriend, confidante, brat, cynic, or domestic-goddess-in-training. She's willing to juggle pretty much anything that gets thrown her way, but the one label she simply won't embrace is ma'am.Like so many bright-eyed college graduates before her, Mitchael begins her twenties armed with the conviction that the world is hers for the taking. And she discovers that it is, mostly—only no one told her just how often she’d have to pick herself up off the floor along the way.Written for every woman who’s experienced the ups and downs of trying to figure out who you’re really meant to be, Just Don’t Call Me Ma’am is a story of one woman and the choices that add up to be her twentysomething life—and of how sometimes you have to remember where you came from before you can figure out where you’re going.
The Only Way Is West: A Once In a Lifetime, 500 Mile Adventure Walking Spain's Camino de Santiago
Bradley Chermside - 2019
A wonderful read.' - Kevin Hand, BBC London.
You’re in Greece and are given a €20 note with an email address scribbled on it. What would you do:1. Spend it? 2. Slip the suspect counterfeit bill into an enemy’s birthday card?3. Send an email, hoping it will lead to you finding everlasting love? Brad, a hopeless romantic, chose the latter.Two years later, his love life remains a disaster and his career is misfiring. As he’s about to walk Spain’s fabled Camino de Santiago to ponder some profound life changes, Brad receives a reply. Incredibly, it’s from a woman who lives on the 1000-year-old pilgrim path, far away from where the money first crossed his palm. She invites him to sleep… ‘on her house’. Hiking nine hundred kilometres on the Road to Santiago to a blind date with the mystery €20 woman, he discovers the utopia of his fantasies, befriends a Hungarian who speaks English in song titles and has his raison d’être revealed to him by a barefoot Mayan mystic. Will he meet his happily-ever-after too? Buy this pacy, exuberant, laugh-out-loud travelogue laced with tips for fellow pilgrims to find out...
Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Rail
Mary Morris - 1991
As in Nothing to Declare, her celebrated travelogue of South America, Morris combines vivid portrayals of people and historical portraits of Soviet events with a more personal journey--her search for roots, family, and her ancestral home in the Ukraine.
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Mexico to Canada
Bruce Buck Nelson - 2018
For five months I hiked through the California desert, the snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. My goal was to succeed in an epic challenge: to hike 2,650 miles and reach Canada before the October snows. It was an unforgettable summer of sunrises, river crossings, and high mountain passes; of physical and mental challenges and peaceful wilderness camps under the stars. In the fall colors of September I reached the border of Canada.This is the story of my thru-hike.
Bigger is Better: Real-Life Wisdom from the No-Drama Mama
Big Ang - 2012
Big Ang has rules to live by for beauty, food, family, friendship, and more. Here she is . . . ON HER KILLER BOOBS: I was on vacation with my family in the Catskills when out of nowhere, this bat flies right into my chest and then falls splat on the ground. Turned out, he died on impact. ON FAMILY TRADITIONS: Every Sunday, we do a feast for fifteen to twentyfive people. Last week, we went through seventy-five meatballs. Even by my family's standards, that's a lot of balls. ON DIETING: Swearing off lasagna to lose weight? You might fit into smaller jeans. But you're still the same person-- except hungrier and bitchier. ON HOBBIES: Would I rather cook for people or have sex? No hard-and-fast rule there. But I will say this: Cooking is "always "satisfying.
Rolling with the Punchlines: A Memoir
Urzila Carlson - 2020
Urzila talks candidly about her childhood with a great family, apart from her abusive dad, and about growing up in South Africa. She shares crazy but true tales about her OE, her move to New Zealand, coming out, getting married and having children, and her life in comedy. This is a great listen from one of our most loved and most popular comedians.
To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
Jedidiah Jenkins - 2018
He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living?In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure--the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world--as well as the internal journey that started it all. As he traverses cities, mountains, and inner boundaries, Jenkins grapples with the question of what it means to be an adult, his struggle to reconcile his sexual identity with his conservative Christian upbringing, and his belief in travel as a way to wake us up to life back home.A soul-stirring read for the wanderer in each of us, To Shake the Sleeping Self is an unforgettable reflection on adventure, identity, and a life lived without regret.Praise for To Shake the Sleeping Self"[Jenkins is] a guy deeply connected to his personal truth and just so refreshingly present."--Rich Roll, author of Finding Ultra"This is much more than a book about a bike ride. This is a deep soul deepening us. Jedidiah Jenkins is a mystic disguised as a millennial."--Tom Shadyac, author of Life's Operating Manual"Thought-provoking and inspirational . . . This uplifting memoir and travelogue will remind readers of the power of movement for the body and the soul."
--Publishers Weekly
Amazon Woman: Facing Fears, Chasing Dreams, and a Quest to Kayak the World's Largest River from Source to Sea
Darcy Gaechter - 2020
Part memoir, part feminist manifesto, Amazon Woman shows what incredible feats we are capable of and will encourage people, especially women, across all backgrounds and ages to find the courage and strength to live the life they’ve imagined.This 148-day journey began on Darcy Gaechter’s 35th birthday. She sold her successful outdoor adventure business, upsetting her partner and boyfriend of twelve years and getting them both fired in the process. The emotional waters that would fester and erupt on the ensuing journey was often more challenging to navigate than the mighty river itself. With blistering lips and irradiated fingernails, Darcy would tackle raging Class Five whitewater for twenty-five days straight, barely survived a dynamite-filled canyon being prepared for a new hydroelectric plan. She and her two companions would encounter illegal loggers, narco-traffickers, murderous Shining Path rebels, and ruthless poachers in the black market trade in endangered species. They would plead for mercy at the hands of the murderous Ashaninka people who were convinced that they had come to steal their children’s organs. In a desperate attempt meant to give her some pretense of control, Darcy even cut off all her hair before entering Peru’s notoriously dangerous “Red Zone” in hopes of passing for a boy and being seen as less of a target. At once a heart-pounding adventure and a celebration of pushing personal limits, Amazon Woman speaks to all of us feeling trapped by our desk-bound, online society. This a story of finding the courage and strength to challenge nature, cultures, social norms, and oneself.
Lost with Directions: Ambling Around America
Rob Erwin - 2016
Aside from the bipolar hillbillies, unfriendly wild animals, run-ins with the law, a mental breakdown, a bad first date, and a near-death experience . . . things actually went pretty well. Taking plenty of detours along the way, Rob’s contagious and hilarious sense of wanderlust carries him on a whirlwind road trip from the Smoky Mountains in the East, to Yellowstone, the Tetons, and Colorado’s snow-covered peaks in the West. In a refreshing style that brings these incredible wild places to life like no travel guide ever could, on seemingly every page we’re reminded of the one universal truth of travel . . . the best parts of any journey are the adventures we least expect.
Mousetrapped
Catherine Ryan Howard - 2010
What could possibly go wrong in the happiest place on earth? When Catherine Ryan Howard decides to swap the grey clouds of Ireland for the clear skies of the Sunshine State, she thinks all of her dreams - working in Walt Disney World, living in the United States, seeing a Space Shuttle launch - are about to come true. Ahead of her she sees weekends at the beach, mornings by the pool and an inexplicably skinnier version of herself skipping around Magic Kingdom. But not long into her first day on Disney soil - and not long after a breakfast of Mickey-shaped pancakes - Catherine's Disney bubble bursts and soon it seems that among Orlando's baked highways, monotonous mall clusters and world famous theme-parks, pixie dust is hard to find and hair is downright impossible to straighten. The only memoir about working in Walt Disney World, Space Shuttle launches, the town that Disney built, religious theme parks, Bruce Willis, humidity-challenged hair and the Ebola virus, MOUSETRAPPED: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida is the hilarious story of what happened when one Irish girl went searching for happiness in the happiest place on earth. (PLEASE NOTE A SECOND EDITION OF THIS BOOK WAS RELEASED FEBRUARY 2011. IT IS ALSO AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.COM. SEARCH FOR ISBN 978-1456559816)