IGX

Factotum , Bukowski
Shakespeare Never Did This, Bukowski
The Road, Jack London
Iron and Silk, Mark Salzman
A Working Stiff's Manifesto, Iain Levison
Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Henry Miller
Journey to the End of the Night, Celine

On Factotum..."One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next."

I'll second Travels with Charley by Steinbeck. It's not only a travel book but it's a compelling snapshot of the times. I remember some very disturbing passages about protests against racial integration that he saw. Most importantly, it's STEINBECK!

North to the Night by Alvah Simon is about a young man who sails to the arctic and deliberately allows his boat to get stuck in the ice so he can spend the winter there. He has some serious adventures as he experiences the crushing awesomeness that is an arctic winter.

Into The Wild by John Krakauer gets reduced to the death of Christopher McCandless in Alaska and whether the cause was bad luck or hubris. While it's not a first person travel book, Krakauer follows McCandless' peregrinations that lead up to the denouement in Alaska and I found them compelling.

Lastly, while I was using the Googleman to help me recall the title of North to the Night, I found The 86 Greatest Travel Books Of All Time

scanned the list donkey posted.

mc phee's pine barrens is great.

he also wrote a terrific book about alaska.

DrDonkeyLove wrote:Lastly, while I was using the Googleman to help me recall the title of North to the Night, I found The 86 Greatest Travel Books Of All Time

Thanks Donkey, that list is very cool. Cahill notably absent.

And you might want to check this list from National Geographic. The 100 best travel/adventure books ever written:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adven ... 60-79.html

Or if you want to read anthologies in which the stories are chosen by great editors and writers:

http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/the- ... thologies/

^^^Unbecoming melt down timmah. Serious question, have you been fiddling with your hormone treatments again?

Don't skulk off the stage here FC. We're just getting started.

Others I enjoyed:

T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Herman Melville, Typee (much more readable than Moby Dick)
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

It may be stretching the definition of travel book a bit, but collections of essays by Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe are excellent.

+1 on the Jack London recommendations.

Didion and Wolfe are considered to be two of the first and best of the New Journalists. (Basically, NJ is the practice of using the techniques of fiction in the service of non-fiction.)
Also at the time (1968) and not credited nearly as much: Ed Abbey. My fave: Desert Solitaire. And the best essay in the book is "Dead Man at Grand View Point."

All three books were inspirational in my early careet.

I find Frank Herbert to be the best, depending on where you're traveling

seeahill wrote:Bryson's A Walk in the Woods gives a fine history of the Appalachian trail. His research is impeccable and (somehow) very interesting. Sometimes you get a writer who has done his research and you see in paragraphs that sound like they came out of an encyclopedia. Bryson is brilliant in making info readable. Compulsively so.

Yes, the book alternates between his walk and a certain hilarity. But other chapters give a fine sense of place: the scenery, the geology, the history. Recommended.

Is this one of those travel writer meets back woods boy, travel writer tells boy to keep their secret a SECRET, the news gets out and then boy's tribe ends up trying to kill before mentioned travel writer? You know, like one of your books

buckethead wrote:I find Frank Herbert to be the best, depending on where you're traveling

Less fiction than some of cahill's books, too.