“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” Dr. Seuss
During the craziness that is Covid-19 and the lack of travel opportunities open to us all, I am all the more grateful for having access to books and the many worlds they open up.
If you are missing being able to travel and are in and out of lockdown, here are some books to read to keep you entertained.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
One of the world’s most famous novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, blends the natural with the supernatural in on one of the most magical reading experiences on earth. ‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.’ Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and its miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book, and only Aureliano Buendia can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny. Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy and comic invention, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century. “Dazzling”. (The New York Times).As one of the pioneers of magic realism and perhaps the most prominent voice of Latin American literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has received international recognition for his novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories.
In a Sunburned Country – Bill Bryson
Naturally, this book all about Australia’s diverse culture, wildlife, and geography will make you feel as if you’re traversing the great Down Under yourself. Between interactions with friendly locals, exploring its Mars-like landscapes, and, of course, experiencing the plethora of (sometimes scary) wildlife, this book takes you on an in-depth ride through the continent. Plus Bryson tells his (real-life) stories with a sense of humor that’s sure to brighten your quarantine.
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book – a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life’s path and, above all, follow your dreams. Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing. With Paulo Coelho’s visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people’s lives.
The Age of Magic – Ben Okri
‘The Age of Magic has begun. Unveil your eyes.’ Eight weary film-makers, travelling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travellers will find themselves drawn in to the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way. An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.
The Adventures of Tintin – Hergé
What could be more inspiring to a young traveler (or older nomads who are still young at heart) than the action-packed adventures of a reporter and his little dog wandering the world? The visually-driven Tintin comic books gave Inma Gregorio, an experienced traveler who runs the travel blog A World to Travel, a sense of wanderlust as a child—and continues to influence her journeys now.
“‘The Adventures of Tintin’ by Belgian cartoonist Hergé was a comic series that took me to Egypt, Congo, Tibet and even the moon before I turned 8 years old. They gave me such great memories and I highly recommended the series for all ages,” she said.
Guardian of Giria – June Molloy
Felix is in a bad mood. An intruder has visited his private clearing. The only traces are a strange scent and an even stranger set of footprints. A few days later, a young fox cub goes missing and her frantic mother asks Felix for help. Felix investigates and discovers two enormous wolves. He realises the residents of Giria Wood are now in great danger and immediately devises a plan to guard the animals and eliminate the wolves. What follows is an exciting adventure as the animals band together to protect and defend against this new threat.
Talking To My Country – Stan Grant
In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australia and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. ‘We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier’, he wrote, ‘We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation’s prosperity.’
Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country.
Talking to My Country is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?
A Thousand Moons – Sebastian Barry
Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in west Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive parents John Cole and Thomas McNulty, whose story Barry told in his acclaimed previous novel Days Without End, she forges a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past.
Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the Civil War, and the fragile harmony of her family is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. Exquisitely written, A Thousand Moons is a stirring, poignant story of love and redemption, of one woman’s journey and her determination to write her own future.
The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for his door, though he does not know it. He follows a silent siren song, an inexplicable knowledge that he is meant for another place. When he discovers a mysterious book in the stacks of his campus library he begins to read, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities, and nameless acolytes. Suddenly a turn of the page brings Zachary to a story from his own childhood impossibly written in this book that is older than he is.
A bee, a key, and a sword emblazoned on the book lead Zachary to two people who will change the course of his life: Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired painter, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances. These strangers guide Zachary through masquerade party dances and whispered back room stories to the headquarters of a secret society where doorknobs hang from ribbons, and finally through a door conjured from paint to the place he has always yearned for. Amid twisting tunnels filled with books, gilded ballrooms, and wine-dark shores Zachary falls into an intoxicating world soaked in romance and mystery. But a battle is raging over the fate of this place and though there are those who would willingly sacrifice everything to protect it, there are just as many intent on its destruction. As Zachary, Mirabel, and Dorian venture deeper into the space and its histories and myths, searching for answers and each other, a timeless love story unspools, casting a spell of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a Starless Sea.
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
Newly divorced journalist Elizabeth Gilbert is struggling to carve out an authentic identity in New York. Desperate to reinvigorate her life and connect with the world around her, she embarks on a modern-day pilgrimage. With warmth and humour, Gilbert chronicles a journey from Italy to India and, finally, to Bali. Each country serves as a vivid backdrop for self-exploration as she comes to terms with the choices that have hitherto defined her life, and begins to rediscover herself.
Seven Years in Tibet – Heinrich Harrer
Seven Years in Tibet is a memoir by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, who recounts his adventures as one of the first Europeans ever to enter Tibet and encounter the Dalai Lama. When World War II begins in 1939, Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter are held prisoners in India by the British but manage to escape to Tibet. In Lhasa, they start learning about the Tibetan way of life, and Harrer becomes one of the tutors and a close friend of the 14th Dalai Lama, at the time still a boy.
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
Hermann Hesse’s moving and inspirational chronicle of spiritual evolution, “Siddhartha”, includes a new introduction by bestselling author Paulo Coehlo in “Penguin Classics”. “Siddhartha” is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, “Siddhartha” is the story of a young Brahmin’s search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, from the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation. Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) suffered from depression, endured criticism for his pacifist views, and weathered series of personal crises which led him to undergo psychoanalysis with J. B.Lang; a process which resulted in “Demian” (1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing world of sensual experience.
Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found – Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America – from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington state – and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise – a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet.
Down Under – Bill Bryson
It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life – a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. Ignoring such dangers – and yet curiously obsessed by them – Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn’t get much better than this…
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle – Dervla Murphy
Shortly after her tenth birthday, Dervla Murphy decided to cycle to India. Almost 20 years later, she set out to achieve her ambition. Her epic journey began during the coldest winter in memory, taking her through Europe, Persia, Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan, and into India. This captivating account–Murphy’s first–is an enchantment that holds the reader to the final page.
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
The first of the defeated kites whirled out of control. They fell from the sky like shooting stars with brilliant, rippling tails, showering the neighbourhood.Amir and Hassan grow up together in Kabul. Amir in the beautiful house his father built, filled with marble, gold, tapestries and mosaics; Hassan in the modest mud hut in the servants’ quarters. The two are inseparable, and when twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament, his loyal friend promises to help him. But neither boy can predict what will happen to Hassan that afternoon – as the kites soar over the city – and how it will change their lives forever.
Journeys of a Lifetime – National Geographic
Compiled from the favorite trips of National Geographic’s legendary travel writers, this fully updated and revised Journeys of a Lifetime spans the globe to highlight the best of the world’s most celebrated and lesser-known sojourns. Offering a diverse array of possibilities, every continent and possible form of transport is covered, illustrated with glorious color photographs. With 16 new pages and updated information throughout, this timely new edition is the perfect resource for travelers who crave adventurous trips–from trekking the heights of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to mountain biking in Transylvania–and those searching for more specific experiences (the world’s top small cruises, hot new museums around the world, secrets for following in the footsteps of film and TV heroes, and more). Each chapter features stunning photography, full-color maps, and practical tips, including how to get there, when to visit, and how to make the most of your journey. Informative, and inspiring, this luxurious volume is a lifelong resource that readers will treasure for years to come.
How NOT To Travel the World – Lauren Juliff
I had no life experience, zero common sense and had never eaten rice. I suffered from debilitating anxiety, was battling an eating disorder and had just had my heart broken. I thought by leaving to travel the world I would instantly become a glamorous and savvy backpacker…But somehow Lauren’s travels were full of bad luck and near-death experiences. Over the space of two years, instead of finding herself, she lost a laptop, a camera, GBP1,000 and some teeth. She was caught up in a tsunami, sat beside a dead woman for six hours and experienced a very unhappy ending during a massage in Thailand. But repeatedly being forced out of her pea-sized comfort zone helped Lauren realise that she was stronger than she once thought and, learning how NOT to travel the world was the most enlightening experience she could have hoped for.
100 Hikes of a Lifetime – National Geographic
From the world’s expert in outdoor adventure, here is the ultimate hiker’s bucket list, with 100 breathtaking experiences for beginners to experts around the globe–from the celebrated Appalachian Trail to the off-the-beaten path (but not to be missed!) Six Waterfalls Hike in Micronesia. Filled with beautiful National Geographic photography, wisdom from expert hikers like Andrew Skurka, need-to-know travel information, and practical wildlife-spotting tips, this inspirational guide offers the planet’s best experiences for hikers and sightseers. From short day hikes–California’s Sierra High Route, Lake Agnes Teahouse in Alberta, Norway’s Mt. Skala–to multiday excursions like Mt. Meru in Tanzania and multi-week treks (Egypt’s Sinai Trail, Bhutan’s Snowman Trek, and the Bibbulum Track in Australia), you’ll find a hike that matches your interests and skill level. Crossing all continents and climates (from the jungles of Costa Rica to the ice fields in Alaska’s Kenai Fjords National Parks), as well as experiences (a wine route through Switzerland or moose spotting on the Teton Crest Trail in Wyoming,) there is a trail for everyone in these pages. So pack your gear and lace your boots: this comprehensive and innovative guide will lead you to experience the best hikes of your life!
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The Mindful Traveller 
Thanks for sharing 👍
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You’re very welcome 🙂 I hope that something caught your eye to read.
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