Six Books Which Will Inspire You to Travel and Seek Adventure

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What to do whilst your not travelling? Dream about travelling of course! And there’s no better way to dream than amidst the pages of a fantastic novel. I have picked six of my favourite books which will inspire you to travel.

Through a combination of reading/dreaming and travelling you can live the richest life possible. Reading allows you to go off on incredible adventures anywhere in the world (and beyond!) even when you cannot travel. The books I read have often been the inspiration behind my travel bucketlist, bringing places to life like no article (sorry to myself and all other travel bloggers!) ever could. Through the character’s eyes we own a piece of their world and the unfamiliar and exotic become familiar. This is a list of some of the books that have inspired me to travel and seek adventure. Many inspire lust for specific places, whilst others simply fill you with the need for adventure! I couldn’t possibly list them all because nearly every single book you read is a contender.

From childhood to adulthood and through many different genres, from the Amazon to Italy, these are my top six picks:

FYI: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This means that if you buy anything through the links in this post I get rewarded with some money too – at no extra cost to yourself! This helps keep my travel blogging dream alive!

Journey to the River Sea, Eva Ibbotson

I have re-read this book many times because it holds for me that magical allure of any childhood stirring of the imagination. It even has that delicious old book smell I’ve had it so long, double the magic! It is the book that made me want to sail around the world. So many of my other childhood books featured ponies or English boarding schools but Journey to the River Sea was my first glimpse into an exotic other world.

This novel is all about embracing new cultures and seeing beyond the myths and stereotypes that surround them. It is about finding the place that calls to you and speaks to your heart. Yes it’s a children’s book but it’s simply wonderful, go read it anyway!

Makes me want to visit: Brazil, and sail down the Amazon.

Journey to the River Sea on Amazon

My Favourite Quotes

‘Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. The place was for her and the people.’

‘And if Maia knew deep down that she would not be allowed to sail away forever up the rivers of the Amazon, she managed to forget it.’

‘She realised that adventures, once they were over, were things that had to stay inside one – that no one else could quite understand.’

‘Daisy offered a mosquito which bit you and gave you yellow fever. ‘You turn as yellow as a lemon and then you die.’

‘Five minutes ago she had wanted to stay in the lagoon forever. Now, just as much, she wanted to make this journey with Finn – to go on and on up the unknown rivers… not getting there, just going.’

The Chronicles of Narnia, C S Lewis

The power of fantasy novels is such that they can make you long for places that do not even exist. The Narnia series for me reflects perfectly that feeling of going on holiday and everything is special and amazing and time slows down and you feel like you were always there, only to have to step back into the wardrobe (or the plane) and it feels like it never even happened! Back to ordinary life once more.

Reading about the strange and unfamiliar worlds of fantasy is little different from reading of unfamiliar foreign countries, the only difference is that they can never become familiar, never be tamed nor tainted with tourists. You can only claim them in your mind.

Makes me want to visit: Narnia!!

The Chronicles of Narnia on Amazon

My Favourite Quotes

‘This is the land of Narnia… all that lies between the lamppost and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea.’

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S Lewis

‘Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny.’

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree, Santa Montefiore

This is the first of Santa Montefiore’s books I read and it remains my favourite. A doomed love story set against the backdrop of the Argentinian pampas this book is the reason why South America is so high up on my travel wish list.

Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree on Amazon

My Favourite Quotes

‘When I close my eyes I see the flat, fertile plains of the Argentine pampa.’

‘Santa Catalina hadn’t changed at all, it was only the people who changed…’

A Thousand Splendid Suns/The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

These are two books which will open your eyes up to a culture you may not understand. Books like these are so important because they help us see unfamiliar perspectives and walk in shoes we would never otherwise walk in. No amount of news coverage or documentaries can match a story for inducing empathy and understanding.

These books bring the world a little closer and open our minds to travelling to places we might not have otherwise considered.

Make me want to visit: Places my mother wouldn’t want me to go.

A Thousand Splendid Suns on Amazon

The Kite Runner on Amazon

My Favourite Quotes

‘Looking back now, I realise I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.’

The kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

‘Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afghanis and we spent it on warm coca-cola and rosewater ice cream topped with crushed pistachios.’

The kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

‘They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.’

The kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

‘One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.’

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

‘A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed. it won’t stretch to make room for you.’

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

‘…each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere…as a reminder of how people like us suffer. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.’

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

Christmas at Tiffany’s, Karen Swan

This is the perfect read if you’ve never been sure where you belong or how to know what life is right for you. Cassie tries on three different cities and three different lives on for size in a bid to discover where she is supposed to be: reinvention and makeover’s galore!

Makes me want to visit: cities and be a glamorous city girl with a fabulous wardrobe and a gaggle of hilarious and witty friends. The specific cities to savour are New York, Paris and London.

Christmas at Tiffany’s on Amazon

My Favourite Quotes

‘I am Parisiene, cherie’, she shrugged, as if that explained everything. ‘It’s in my DNA.’

‘Have you ever wondered what you’d be like if you lived in…Venice!… I might be a brunette there. With a bob. And I’d wear flat ballet shoes like Audrey Hepburn… eat prosciutto with figs for lunch… I would be living a completely different life.’

‘So that was the plan – a city with a friend in it, a bed to sleep on and a temporary job. The girls would rebuild her from scratch.’

‘I can make you a brunette, get you a job at Dior… but if you do not understand the french attitude to love, then you are still just somebody who comes here to climb the Eiffel Tower.’

The Olive Branch, Jo Thomas

Have you ever dreamed of buying a dilapidated farmhouse in Italy and falling for a handsome Italian man? C’mon, we’ve all been there. This is one of those books you can live out your silliest fantasies through. Complete with wary and dismissive locals, a terrifying guard-goat and the idyllic surroundings of rural southern Italy. The book does make a point of reminding us often that sunshine and la dolce vita cannot solve all your problems – nah! I refuse to believe there isn’t anything that gorgeous country can’t solve. (Hello bias) This is my favourite type of novel to inspire my travels, you know a lot of it is cliched and ridiculous fantasy (I should know I’ve lived my own Italian dream and know it doesn’t always work out the way it does in books), but it is irresistible nonetheless! I could pretend to be a cultured and worldly traveller, seeking the unknown and challenging but actually what really powers my travels is a deep deep desire to be somewhere, anywhere, sunny and beautiful and, different. And what’s so wrong about that?

The Olive Branch on Amazon

‘I’m miles away from home, in the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen, with my worldly possessions in a Ford Ka, trying to tempt a goat away from a front door with half a kit-kat.’

‘You can see right across the valley and neighbouring small hilltop towns, forming a blanket of green olive trees with trulli scattered across it like little clusters of white mushrooms.’

What are your favourite books that inspire you to travel? There are so so many more I could have included!!

Looking for real life inspiration?

How to Spend 3 Days in Lisbon

A Guide to Magical Sintra

Does Venice Live up to Expectations?