Travel reading

I just read a guardian article where writers talk about their best travel reads and it got me thinking about my own choices (any excuse to re-tell some of my traveller’s tales…). OK, here they are:

I remember reading “Dracula” as I was landing in Tierra del Fuego (blog from 15 November 2004 ). The novel is pretty scary, but not half as frightening as flying into fierce Patagonian winds in a 19-seater plane.

I remember being in the Amazon rain forest in Peru hiding out with a pair of binoculars in a camouflaged shelter. I was waiting for the rain to stop so I could see macaws visit a clay-lick. I was reading the most unlikely novel to while away the hours: A pair of blue eyes by Thomas Hardy. (Blog from 17th December 2004)

As we are on the theme of incongruous reads, I may as well share with you that I read Haunted House by Charles Dickens on Ipanema Beach in Rio (January 2005). Nothing like a 19th century ghost story to accompany hot sun and caiparinhas on a Brazilian beach.

I read only Indian novels in India and I read a lot of Japanese fiction in Japan. This works well as I get parallel shots of culture on different levels as I try to make sense of it all.

In Kefalonia in August 1999 I read Captain Correlli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres. It didn’t feel like the same place and it was such a sad book that it put a bit of a dampener on the trip.

In Bariloche, Argentina (Patagonia: foothills of the Andes) I read the Lord Of the Rings trilogy. We were staying in a little cottage just like a hobbit hole and hiking up snowy mountains so it felt very appropriate (Blog from October 2004)

In Chiloe in Chile, I read Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and saw the island’s giant birds in a whole new light (Blog from November 2004)

If I had to pick my favourite travel read however, it would be Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. I read it in 2003 while lounging on a beach in Koh Samet, Thailand for 5 blissful days. It was a good holiday book as I reflected on my idyllic environment according to the various chapters of the book. For example there was one chapter about Ruskin, so I had a Ruskinian day doing word paintings and so on. Another day was Hopperian, where I noticed beauty in unlikely places. I need to re-read the book while living in Japan. The knot of power cables outside my window might take on new beauty.

Is anyone reading this blog? Care to share your favourite travel reads?