books and travel

as many of you probably know two of my favorite things in the world are books and traveling.
i've read 82 books in 2010 and hope to read a few more over the next few days and then my love of traveling and new places (fun places of 2010 - kansas, missouri, civil war trip, maine, wash dc, and then all my little mini road trips to see friends) and the upcoming eurotrip!

so i love travel writing and if i was a better writer it would be my dream career. to travel the world and write about it. one of my friends wants me to write a book about my travels, but i will never happen. i think that is one of the reasons i love "eat, pray, love" so much. the travel aspect of it and the life in other places and the things you experience and how they impact you. travel writing is one of my favorite things to read and i feel i can just get away with it and laugh about the antics and usually crazy things they get involved in and imagine what it would be like to just move to italy, travel around the world for a year or travel around ireland with a fridge.

amazon.com

so along with travel writing i also love reading books set in fun places and so i was in the library a few days ago and found the best book. - it is nancy pearl's "book lust to go: recommend reading for travelers, vagabonds and dreamers"it is a awesome and she lists a bunch of countries, geographic areas, cities and then some books both fiction & non fiction and why she chose them for that place. i've spent the last two days going though the book and creating a list of all the books i want to read from it. i'm excited to read some books about the places i'm traveling to - switzerland, czech republic, hungary, austria, germany and the netherlands. i'm always reading anything i can get my hands on about ireland both fiction and non-fiction.

i loved going through this book picking out titles and i can't wait to go to my library and my favorite used book shop to look for all these fun places to read about and maybe one day travel!

some of my favorite travel writing books have been anything tony horowitz - who it what i like to call a travel writing historian, round ireland with a fridge by tony hawk, i love bill bryson - one of my favs is the lost continent, the lost girls is about 3 friends who travel around the world for a year, and i've read a few that were great about hiking the appalachian trail, living in italy and so many more. reading these books makes me want to hop on the next flight there!

 what type of book do you prefer to read?