Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents


Elisabeth Eaves - 2011
    Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, she loses herself -- literally -- to an Australian tour guide; in Cairo, she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, only to discover the beginning of a pattern that will characterize her life over the long-term: while long-distance relationships work well for her, traditional relationships do not.Wanderlust, however, is more than a chronological conquest of men and countries: at its core, it's a journey of self-discovery. In the course of her travels, Eaves finds herself and the sense of home she's been lacking since childhood -- and she sheds light on a growing culture of young women who have the freedom and inclination to define their own, increasingly global, lifestyles, unfettered by traditional roles and conventions of past generations of women.

Ruminations on Twentysomething Life


Aaron Karo - 2005
    With hilarious anecdotes and irreverent observations, Karo captures the twentysomething experience like never before and answers the question, "Is there life after college?" Featuring the very best of his world-renowned email column as well as brand-new material published here for the first time, Ruminations on Twentysomething Life details Karo's evolution from frat boy to manhood and explores the frenzied lives of a generation living in the strange and unique gap between college and marriage. With his trademark acerbic wit, Karo ruminates on everything from your first day on the job to the last call at the bar. Perfect for students about to get their first dose of reality, twentysomethings procrastinating at work, or anyone who wants to relive their glory days, this book is sure to have readers laughing out loud and nodding their heads in agreement that there is indeed life after college.

Dave Barry Does Japan


Dave Barry - 1992
    Join him as he belts out oldies in a karaoke bar, marries a geriatric geisha girl, takes his first bath in public, bows to just about everyone, and explores culture shock in all its numerous humorous forms, including: Failing to Learn Japanese in Only Five Minutes (Or: "Very Much Good Morning, Sir!") ; Humor in Japan (Take My Tofu, Please!); Sports in Japan ("Yo, Batter! Loudly Make it Fly!"), and more.

By the Seat of My Pants: Humorous Tales of Travel and Misadventure


Don George - 2005
    Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, these experiences can give birth to our most profound travel lessons and illuminations, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories. This collection presents 31 globe-girdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travelers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers.

Drink Smoke Pass Out


Judith Lucy - 2012
    Growing up a Catholic, she thought about becoming a nun, and later threw herself into work, finding a partner and getting off her face. Somehow, none of that worked.So lately, she's been asking herself the big questions. Why are we here? Is there a God? What happens when we die? And why can't she tell you what her close friends believe in, but she can tell you which ones have herpes? No-one could have been more surprised than Judith when she started to find solace and meaning in yoga and meditation, and a newfound appreciation for what others get from their religion.In her first volume of memoir, the bestselling The Lucy Family Alphabet, Judith dealt with her parents. In Drink, Smoke, Pass Out, she tries to find out if there's more to life than wanting to suck tequila out of Ryan Gosling's navel. With disarming frankness and classic dry wit, she reviews the major paths of her life and, alarmingly, finds herself on a journey.

The Roads to Sata: A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan


Alan Booth - 1985
    The Roads to Sata is his wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek.Although he was a city person--he was brought up in London and spent most of his adult life in Tokyo--Booth had an extraordinary ability to capture the feel of rural Japan in his writing. Throughout his long and arduous trek, he encountered a variety of people who inhabit the Japanese countryside--from fishermen and soldiers, to bar hostesses and school teachers, to hermits, drunks, and tramps. His wonderful and often hilarious descriptions of these encounters are the highlights of these pages, painting a multifaceted picture of Japan from the perspective of an outsider, but with the knowledge of an insider.The Roads to Sata is travel writing at its best, illuminating and disarming, poignant yet hilarious, critical but respectful. Traveling across Japan with Alan Booth, readers will enjoy the wit and insight of a uniquely perceptive guide, and more importantly, they will discover a new face of an often misunderstood nation.

Five Hundred Mile Walkies


Mark Wallington - 1986
    His two-legged companion is Mark. This is a heroic study of survival against the odds, as together they take a journey, up hill and down dale, with rucksacks full of kennomeat, along Britain's longest coastal footpath - from Somerset to Devon, from Cornwall to Dorset.

Narrow Dog to Indian River


Terry Darlington - 2008
    But no, they looked to the New World for their extraordinary new adventure...No-one has ever sailed an English narrowboat in the US before, for reasons that become clear during the 9-month voyage of the Phyllis May - including 30-mile sea crossings, blasting heat, tornadoes, hurricanes and all manner of intimidating wildlife. But the real danger comes from the Good Ole Boys and Girls of the Deep South. Colonels, bums, captains, planters, heroes, drunks, gongoozlers, dancing dicks and beautiful spies - they all want to meet the Brits on the painted boat and their thin dog and take them home and party them to death. And from the Phyllis May, a thousand miles of the little-known South-East Seaboard unfold at six miles an hour- the golden marshes of the Carolinas, the incomparable cities of Charleston and Savannah, and the lost arcadias of Georgia and Florida.Beautifully written, lovingly observed, and very funny, Narrow Dog to Indian River takes you on a dangerous, surprising and always entertaining journey.

Ayoade on Top


Richard Ayoade - 2019
    It’s a journey deep within, in a way that’s respectful and non-invasive; a journey for which we will all pay a heavy price, even if you’ve waited for the smaller paperback edition.Ayoade argues for the canonisation of this brutal masterpiece, a film that celebrates capitalism in all its victimless glory; one we might imagine Donald Trump himself half-watching on his private jet’s gold-plated flat screen while his other puffy eye scans the cabin for fresh, young prey."

Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain


George Mahood - 2013
    George and Ben have three weeks to cycle 1000 miles from the bottom of England to the top of Scotland. There is just one small problem… they have no bikes, no clothes, no food and no money. Setting off in just a pair of Union Jack boxer shorts, they attempt to rely on the generosity of the British public for everything from food to accommodation, clothes to shoes, and bikes to beer.During the most hilarious adventure, George and Ben encounter some of Great Britain's most eccentric and extraordinary characters and find themselves in the most ridiculous situations. Free Country is guaranteed to make you laugh (you may even shed a tear). It will restore your faith in humanity and leave you with a big smile on your face and a warm feeling inside.

Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over


Geraldine Brooks - 1997
    Twenty years later Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness. Intimate, moving, and often humorous, Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle


Dervla Murphy - 1965
    She has written other travel books, including In Ethiopia with a Mule.

The Road to Oxiana


Robert Byron - 1937
    His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, it not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures. In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. When Paul Fussell "rediscovered" The Road to Oxiana in his recent book Abroad, he whetted the appetite of a whole new generation of readers. In his new introduction, written especially for this volume, Fussell writes: "Reading the book is like stumbling into a modern museum of literary kinds presided over by a benign if eccentric curator. Here armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs and notices, official forms, letters, diary entries, essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical and archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays and disasters), and--the triumph of the book--at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions and musical scoring."

You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day


Mo Willems - 2006
    At the end of each day, he drew a cartoon of the one event that stuck out in his mind, from the sublime to the ridiculous. This is his sketch diary.

A Woman's Passion for Travel: True Stories of World Wanderlust


Marybeth Bond - 2004
    In women's travel, elements of the personal, the relationships pondered, and the connections made, often forge the way. They determine the trip's texture, shape its nuances. Again and again, women use travel to discover themselves, to create changes big and small, to contemplate life from new angles. And, always, women find inspiration from other women. Lighthearted or serious, sad or funny, or some combination of it all, each story in this collection will move you—perhaps even to the road itself.