the problem with travel books and wanderlust

I am, and will always been, in love with traveling. Insatiable Wanderlust. Some times all it takes is a quick weekend trip away from everything. Most of the time though, I'm daydreaming of all the other
countries, as well as other states right here in the US, that I want to see.

Unfortunately, I am also a very broke college graduate with rent to pay and a wedding to plan.  I don't exactly have an abundance of time or money.

Luckily I do have an escape, BOOKS. I can take a road trip cross country, learning about new landmarks along with the characters, and revisiting ones that I've been to before. I can travel to different countries that I've dreamed of visiting for well... ever.

I especially like the books that have me sitting with my phone or laptop next to me so that I can google places and facts to learn more. I can know random details, or fun stories of traditions and culture without ever having been there.

Sadly the "without ever having been there", is the kicker. Traveling via book is fantastic, but sometimes it only serves to make me want to jump on the next plane to a new country. I just get in my car and start driving.

So you tell me. Am I just the weird one here? Or are there others like me? Please comment below! Where do you want to go? What are your favorite travel books?? Can't wait to see your replies!

Top Ten Tuesday -- FREEBIE week!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list  that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

This Top Ten Tuesday it's a freebie -- use this week to write a top ten list about ANYTHING in literature. Maybe you have a more specific list you want to do (Top Ten Dystopians, Top Ten Creatures in Paranormal Lit, Top Ten Classics, etc) or something completely your own?

Check here for future topics!

I decided that my (Jamie's) list is going to be:

Top Ten Books That Intensify The Travel Bug In Me

1. Amy & Roger's Epic Detour -- I honestly was starting to plan out my own epic roadtrip while reading this. I'm always the type who wants to go explore faraway lands but this book made me realize all the fun and awesome sites to be seen right in my own country!

2. anything Bill Bryson - if you like good travelogues...Bill Bryson is your man!

3. Eat, Pray, Love -  I know a lot of people hated this one but the descriptions made me salivate. Or maybe it was the food in the Italy section? Gross either way.

4.  French Milk -- This was SUCH an interesting read. It's a graphic novel about a girl and her mom's extended vacation in Paris. It seriously made me want to go back. Again with the food...lots of food descriptions. Food and travel just go hand and hand so well!

5.  Travels With Charley -- This one was another one that REALLY made me want to travel all over the US and see all the amazing places there are right here. Great travelogue!

6. Anna and the French Kiss - This book had me practically dying to get back to Paris. All of the places to be explored. This one made me think of how the city just romanced me to death as opposed to French Milk (above) which just made me want to eat a lot and live there.

7. 360 Degrees Longitude - This one was epic! A husband and wife traveling all around with their two children --- and biking a lot of the way! They went to sooo many places and I just honestly couldn't soak it all in. I learned so much and really felt like armchair traveling.

8. On The Road - Seriously I loved this book but I know lots of people hated it. I loved the meandering plot and just how it evoked that feeling of being on the road.

9. Memoirs of A Geisha -- This book has made me want to explore Japan (and China!) so bad in my life. I just really got a sense of the surroundings and wanted to go explore myself.


Well, only got 9 for today but those are some of the books I've read that really intensify that travel bug in me. It happens a lot to me in travelogues (obvi) and fiction that really has lush descriptions of amazing places.

Can't wait to see all your diverse lists today!!

Travels With Charley-- John Steinbeck

Title/Author: Travels with Charley--John Steinbeck
Publisher/Year: Penguin Classics--first published in 1962
How I got this: Used book store love!
Why I read this: Um, clearly you don't know me. I'm travelogue obsessed.
Rating: 4.5 stars. Minus a half star because there were some slow parts for me.

I cannot help but read travelogues in the summer. I feel as though if I can't physically be traveling then I should probably be at least living vicariously through another traveler. I saw this at the used bookstore and figured I should give it a go even though he was "just traveling around America." The thing you have to realize about my wanderlust: It's always for everywhere outside the US. My own wanderlust has me wishing for all these exotic places and John Steinbeck took his crafty little hands and plucked me from various places around the globe and plopped me right back into my own backyard to show me that there are many places in America worthy of seeing. I've never wanted to explore America so much as I do after reading this fine travelogue.

And so begins my journey through America with John Steinbeck and his dog Charley. John Steinbeck, feeling the years slipping by, decided to trek across America in search of the American spirit and to connect with the American people and the natural world. He sheds his name and comfortable life at home for his trailer and his dog Charley and wanders through the back roads to experience and get to know America in all her various manifestations.

Incredible writing, rich insights, and the American landscape fuse together in this non-fiction work of Steinbeck's. His writing is just as breathtaking as it is in his fiction works. I mean, how he can manage to fill these pages with beautiful sentence after beautiful sentence is beyond me. The imagery that Steinbeck provides is an unparalleled experience as my senses are loaded with visions of mountains, the sounds of different American dialects, or the smell of the forests.

His insights into the American psyche and America in general are spot-on and are thought-provoking in their relevance. His disenchantment with certain American characteristics--consumerism, selfishness, lack of simplicity, rootlessness, the never ending race towards progress, the rise of a homogeneous nation- are things I think about as do many people. He mulls over these things weighing the good and the bad inherently in each. His conversations with people from state to state help give a "fly on the wall" view of ordinary American people. His reflections on current events are interesting for someone who is not familiar with the 60's.

Seeing America through the eyes of John Steinbeck was truly an experience and has taught me that there is plenty to see in my own country. You can't learn about a place and its people from somebody else, no matter how well they tell of it.

"I've always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very much like a road map. I envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality. I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style." -page 60 of Travels with Charley

Thank you, John Steinbeck, for lighting a fire beneath me to discover my country in all its beauty and in all its ugliness, to experience nature as well as humanity, and to take the time to think critically and learn what it means to be an American.


As for you, friends, have you discovered your own country lately? I'd love to hear about your experience with traveling around your own area. What have you discovered about your country and about yourself? I'm making it my mission to start exploring just the immediate areas around me.

Jamie takes on 360 Degrees Longitude: One Family's Journey Around the World

Book Title/Author: 360 Degrees Longitude: One Family's Journey Around the Word by John Higham
Publisher/Year Published: Alyson Books 2009
How my grubby hands got a hold of this book: I won this via a giveaway on Goodreads.
Why I read this book: If I'm not traveling myself, I won't pass up a chance to live vicariously through others whilst they are having a journey of a lifetime.
Rating: 5 stars--honestly one of the best travel memoirs I've read. I've loved others but always found them to drag in certain places but this one never did for me.

One thing you should probably know about me before I proceed with my review. I suffer from wanderlust, the travel bug, or whatever name you feel compelled to call it. If I could explore the world for the rest of my life, I'd be a happy camper. That being said, you can imagine how giddy I was when this book showed up in my mailbox. I immediately got the goosebumps like I do before I travel caused by that feeling of exploring the unknown and the thrill that there may be an adventure in your immediate future.

I started this book and within a page or so I already had one question. Can I join this family? I mean, for real, this family is kickass. They spend 10 years meticulously planning and saving up for this "World-the-Round trip" (and yes, that's World the Round) in which they will travel around the world for 52 weeks with their two children that are 8 and 11. That would be enough to make most parents break out in a sweat and bring them to their knees with anxiety. And did I mention that for a good chunk of this time they will be cycling via tandem bikes from London to Istanbul with children and luggage in tow?

This decently thick travelogue is set up like an itinerary with excerpts of the family's personal journal entries placed in various parts of the stories. There are also added goodies that were included. The book is set up so that at different points you will come to a place where you an go on to Google Earth to visually be a part of their trip. You'll see pictures, videos, and additional text. I found myself checking out a few of them (and will probably check out more at some point) but found it a little distracting while reading to stop and get on my computer. And the likelihood of someone reading this all in front of a computer is pretty slim. Really cool feature to the book but the novelty wears off after awhile.

Anyways, this book is exceptional. I mean it. The Higham family adventure is one of the best vacations I've had from the comfort of my plush little chair. John Higham carefully creates a scrapbooks of sorts as he balances recounting the sights and the scenery (and some interesting facts along the way!) with the family's personal thoughts and experiences as they face the unknown and explore some of the most beautiful places in the world. He touches delicately on the frustrations and annoyances in traveling with one's family (such as how two adults can have alone time??) and shares the joys of experiencing the world and growing together as a family. Alot of travelogues I've read drag in places but he really knows when not to linger on one country for too long and how to balance reflection, descriptions of people and scenery, and insights on history and culture.

Whether he is describing eating ham sandwiches for months, the challenge of "luggage Tetris," or homeschooling kids on the road--be prepared to experience the good humor that the family maintains throughout. I'm not sure I could find the humor in French campgrounds with no toilet paper or being stranded in remote places. But somehow this family is able to face defeat, give it a swift blow to the groin and keep on pedaling through some of the biggest hurdles and trials that one could face whilst traveling.

The best part about this book, for me, is that this family seems to be navigating by the same principle of travel that I believe in. Traveling is so much more than snapping photographs in front of historic sites and staying in posh hotels. True, those are all elements that can make a great trip, but traveling is really about the rich experiences with other cultures and viewing the world as one gigantic classroom. It's, as John Higham points out, "about discovering how people all over the world are similar, yet different in profoundly subtle ways, and how because of those very differences we were always able to find something to eat, something to wear, and somewhere to sleep."

It helps you to realize that at the end of the day "humankind in all its wonderful weirdness is the same all over the planet."





Thanks for stopping by if you are here from the Radiant Reviews meme!