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6.29.2016

Books to Fuel Your Wanderlust

Ring Road, Iceland, September 2015

The only thing I love as much as reading is traveling (excluding my husband, of course). I'm always dreaming of visiting a new city, state, country... you get it. I've recently found some A+ travel-themed material, which is really outside my regular reading zone, and thought I'd share the wealth.

Here are some titles that make me want to hit the road ASAP:


1) No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering by Clara Benson

A memoir, as the titles suggests, about traveling (overseas) sans baggage, but also a look at the author's struggle with severe anxiety and depression years before her journey. Benson's around my age and so hilariously cynical, to boot, that I couldn't stop turning the pages. Her experiences are both totally relatable and then completely foreign at the same time. Weird, right? There's also the guy she meets on OKCupid who suggests the whole thing, and a home in a garbage compactor, but I'll let you read it to get the other juicy bits that make it so good. *One of my favorites of 2016

Favorite passage:
I'd have saved myself some heartache if someone had informed me that life isn't a linear, teleological climb that culminates in some final plateau. It tends to look a lot more like a rolling tumbleweed that gets blown off arroyo cliffs and trapped in barged cow fences just as often as it rolls smoothly down the road. I wish I'd known how many forces are completely out of our control and how often we fail to get exactly what we want (and the disappointment that sometimes follows when we do get exactly what we want). I wish I'd know to hold everything a little more loosely; to be more accepting of the millions of messy, glorious forms a single life can take; to quit acting like the human experience was a geometry equation with a firmly established, correct answer. And hell, I wish I'd known it's perfectly acceptable to have a little fun with the whole business of being alive.

2) Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel: Our List of the 500 Best Places on the Planet - Ranked by Lonely Planet

I actually read through all 500 picks and have never wanted to race to the airport and randomly select a destination so badly in my life. So many beautiful landscapes and interesting places! Naturally, I made a list of the locations I'd already visited and found I'd only seen 25/500. Looks like I've got some traveling to do! *Scroll down to see my own images of some of those 25.


3) The New York Times 36 Hours: 125 Weekends in Europe by Barbara Ireland

More a coffee table book than a guide you'd cart around (this thing is pretty hefty), the 36 Hours collection (I want them ALL) is not only beautiful, but also informative. I'm going to be honest and just come out and say that I love this one for the incredible photography packed within its pages. I sometimes find myself flipping through whilst daydreaming of my next getaway. The itineraries are more for people who enjoy hunting down cocktail joints and getting nightclub action in over finding new bookstores, so, again, I mainly use it as inspiration for my own photo work rather than travel guide.

Schloss Neuschwanstein, Germany, 2014
Versailles, France, 2014

Eiffel Tower, France, 2014
Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, Iceland, 2015








*All images (aside from book covers) are my own. 

 Have any favorites that tempt you to pack up? Let me know!

9 comments:

  1. Such gorgeous pics, you make me want to hit the road, too! I've seen you mention No Baggage and it sounds like such a great read.

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    1. Thanks! And it's soooo good. Definitely one of my favorites this year.

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  2. Your photos are amazing! They make me want to travel to each of those places. Wow! 36 Hours sounds like such a great book to look through.

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    1. Thanks, lady!! The 36 Hours collection is really cool and I just realized I didn't actually link to it. Fail! Haha.

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  3. I kind of love coffee table books? I feel like it's a weird thing to say, but there is something wonderful about having a giant beautiful book that forces you to find a comfy place and commit to reading for a while!

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    1. Nope, I'm with you! Total sucker for coffee table books. I have one that has glass covering an area to put books and I take advantage of it!

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  4. I've heard such good things about No Baggage from multiple sources!

    Just echoing everyone else's comment about how gorgeous these photos are. :)

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    1. Thank ya, thank ya! And, also, you should totally read No Baggage ASAP because it is just SO good.

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  5. Those photos are amaaaaaaaaazing. Plus No Baggage sounds very entertaining

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