http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/1997/10/29#armchair-travel I like travelling, but in some ways I like reading about travel even more: I can fit it into my salary, for one thing, and for another it's sometimes fun to read about travelling to places I'd never really want to go, like <a href="antarctica.html">Antarctica</a>. <ul>Recommended: <li>Evan S. Connell <ul> <li><cite>A Long Desire</cite> <li><cite>The White Lantern</cite> </ul> <li>Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin novels are (among many other things) quite excellent travelogues for the early years of the 19th century. <li>Aurel Stein, <cite>On Ancient <a href="central-asia.html">Central-Asian</a> Tracks: Brief Narrative of Three Expeditions in Innermost Asia and Northwestern China</cite> [<a href="../reviews/on-ancient-central-asian-tracks/">Review</a>] <li>John Lloyd Stephens, <cite>Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and <a href="maya.html">Yucatan</a></cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Tommaso Astarita, <cite>Between Salt Water and Holy Water</cite> <li>Goetzmann, <cite>New Lands, New Men</cite> <li>P. J.Griffiths, <cite>Great Journeys</cite> <li>Hsu, <cite>The Mediterranean Was a Desert</cite> <li>Mark Jacobson, <cite>12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe</cite> <li>Kirch, <cite>Music in Every Room</cite> <li>Jean Malaurie, <cite>Ultima Thule: Explorers and Natives in the Polar North</cite> <li>Robert McGhee, <cite>The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/230862.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Jeannette Mirsky, <cite>To the Arctic! The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times</cite> <li>Mirsky, <cite>Great Chinese Travelers</cite> <li>Alan Moorehead, <cite>The Blue Nile</cite> <li>Karin Muller <ul> <li><cite>Along the Inca Road</cite> <li><cite>Hitchhiking Vietnam</cite> </ul> <li>Dervia Murphy, <cite>The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe</cite> <li>Ruth Padel, <cite>Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest to See the Last Wild Tigers</cite> <li>Michael Palin, <cite>Pole to Pole: North to South by Camel, River Raft and Balloon</cite> <li>Francine Prose, <cite>Sicilian Odyssey</cite> <li>Jill Schneider, <cite>Route 66 Across New Mexico</cite> <li>Tim Severin, <cite>The China Voyage: Across the Pacific by Bamboo Raft</cite> <li>Tahir Shah <ul> <li><cite>In Search King Solomon's Mines</cite> <li><cite>Trail of Feathers: In Searcfh of the Birdmen of Peru</cite> </ul> <li>Jean Bowie Shor, <cite>After You, Marco Polo</cite> <li>Rebecca Sonit, <cite>A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland</cite> <li>Strassberg, <cite>Inscribed Landscapes</cite> (imp. Han trav. writing) <li>Janet Wallach, <cite>Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell</cite> [Yet Another Victorian Eccentric] <li>Rogers E. M. Whitaker, <cite>All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo: World's Greatest Railroad Buff</cite> </ul>