13 Books That Will Make You Want to Go Away
It is National Read a Book Day, so to celebrate, we have put together a list of thirteen of our favorite books to inspire your wanderlust.
Books and travel go hand-in-hand. Whether you’re packing a book for a long flight, for some downtime between tours, or for some serious relaxation time on the beach, good reading material is a must for any trip.
Since it’s National Read a Book Day, the fabulous team of Poe Travel readers has put together a list of some of our favorite books to make you want to pack your bags and explore. Some of these are travel-related books, and some of these are books with settings so vivid that you’ll want to experience them for yourself. You’ll want these titles on your shelf (or in your Kindle library, if that’s your bag!) to inspire your next getaway.
With a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, there’s something for everyone on this list. Bon voyage, adventurers!
1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Recommended by: Ellison and Angela
Synopsis: In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
Buy A Gentleman in Moscow on Bookshop.org.
2. My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme
Recommended by: Erika
Synopsis: Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story—struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe—unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.
This is also the book that inspired the fun film Julie & Julia!
Buy My Life in France on Bookshop.org.
3. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Recommended by: Breana
Synopsis: At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered, and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
This book inspired Reese Witherspoon’s wildly successful film adaptation by the same name.
Buy Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail on Bookshop.org.
4. The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones
Recommended by: Angela
Synopsis: This alluring novel of friendship, love, and cuisine brings the best-selling author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light to one of the great Chinese subjects: food. As in her previous novels, Mones's captivating story also brings into focus a changing China -- this time the hidden world of high culinary culture
When Maggie McElroy, a widowed American food writer, learns of a Chinese paternity claim against her late husband's estate, she has to go immediately to Beijing. She asks her magazine for time off, but her editor counters with an assignment: to profile a rising culinary star, Sam Liang. In China, Maggie unties the knots of her husband's past, finding out more than she expected about him and about herself. With Sam as her guide, she is drawn deep into a world of food rooted in centuries of history and philosophy. To her surprise, she begins to be transformed by the cuisine, by Sam's family—a querulous but loving pack of cooks and diners—and most of all by Sam himself. The Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating story of a woman regaining her soul in the most unexpected of places.
Buy The Last Chinese Chef on Bookshop.org.
5. A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
Recommended by: Margaret
Synopsis: In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.” The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and—despite her prosthetic leg—helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.
Buy A Woman of No Importance on Bookshop.org.
6. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Recommended by: Breana
Synopsis: The Salt Path is the true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England.
Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, through Devon and Cornwall.
Carrying only the essentials for survival on their backs, they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea, and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable and life-affirming journey.
Buy The Salt Path on Bookshop.org.
7. A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
Recommended by: Erika
Synopsis: The only thing gonzo gastronome and internationally bestselling author Anthony Bourdain loved as much as cooking is traveling. Inspired by the question, What would be the perfect meal?, Tony sets out on a quest for his culinary holy grail and in the process turns the notion of perfection inside out. From California to Cambodia, A Cook’s Tour chronicles the unpredictable adventures of America's boldest and bravest chef. Fans of Bourdain will find much to love in revisiting this classic culinary and travel memoir.
Buy A Cook’s Tour on Bookshop.org.
8. Normal People by Sally Rooney
Recommended by: Breana
Synopsis: Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life-changing begins. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. With settings from rural Ireland into Dublin and even featuring a villa in Italy, this story of mutual fascination will have you ready to explore.
Buy Normal People on Bookshop.org.
9. A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage
Recommended by: Margaret
Synopsis: Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage's deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just ways to quench thirst. They also represent six eras that span the course of civilization—from the adoption of agriculture, to the birth of cities, to the advent of globalization. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century through each epoch's signature refreshment. As Standage persuasively argues, each drink is in fact a kind of technology, advancing culture and catalyzing the intricate interplay of different societies. After reading this enlightening book, you may never look at your favorite drink in quite the same way again.
Buy A History of the World in Six Glasses from Bookshop.org.
10. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Recommended by: a Poe Travel client!
In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want—husband, country home, successful career—but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion.
This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.
Buy Eat Pray Love on Bookshop.org.
11. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Recommended by: Breana
Synopsis: In January 1946, London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book? As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society's members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Buy The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on Bookshop.org.
12. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
Recommended by: Ellison
Synopsis: When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be...until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago to a Burmese woman they have never heard of.
Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father's past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader's belief in the power of love to move mountains.
Buy The Art of Hearing Heartbeats on Bookshop.org.
13. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen
Recommended by: Erika
Synopsis: Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, sold Juicy Fruit gum at her school’s black market, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now, Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR.
Buy Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking on Bookshop.org.
Your biggest challenge at this point will be choosing your destination after this list of books leaves you feeling inspired. Get to reading, and then let us know where you’re headed.
If you would like to Go Away anywhere in the world, simply contact us. We will check dates, rates, and availability to set you on your way.