Saturday 7 March 2015

Ten books which inspired me to travel



It was World Book Day on Thursday, and when I went trawling through my blogs to find something appropriate to dig up for the day, I found this post from four years ago, on seven books that changed the way I see the world. Re-reading it, it struck me that several of the titles were there because they had sparked an interest in other parts of the world, and upon further thinking, I realised that many of my past and future travel plans have been influenced by fiction. So here are ten books which have inspired me to travel.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne) and Journey to the Volcano (Rose Tremain)
Let’s start with one of my favourite topics; volcanoes! I’ve been fascinated by them since childhood, and these are two books I read quite early on which made me want to go and see them for myself. Verne’s classic features characters entering the bowels of the Earth via a European volcano, which fired up my imagination, whilst Tremain’s children’s book, which is out of print now, tells the story of a young British-Sicilian boy who is whisked off to his mother’s village on the slopes of Mount Etna, and finds himself and his family caught up in a devastating eruption. This is one of the two volcanoes I’ve managed to reach so far, and climbing it was an amazing experience.

Mount Etna
 Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser) and Brooklyn (Colm Tóibín)
Sister Carrie was on the syllabus of a fascinating module on 19th century American Literature that I took in my first year of university, and paints a vivid picture of a young New York City growing up fast. Several years later I was browsing the ebooks from my local public library, and picked Brooklyn, which tells the story of an Irish immigrant making her way in the 1950s city. I was taken by the descriptions of the city in both books, and both contributed to my decision to take a trip to New York last year.

New York City
 The Bone People (Keri Hulme)
Another university find, from a module on postcolonial literature, this is a brilliantly-written book which completely pulled me into the cold, lonely, beautiful and mystical world of New Zealand’s South Island. I’ve played with the idea of looking for work in New Zealand since, and it’s definitely on my list of places to see.

Ghostwritten and Number9Dream (David Mitchell)                  
You’ve probably heard of and maybe read Cloud Atlas, but David Mitchell’s other work is just as intricate and magical. Mitchell lived in Japan for a while and both books feature this country, both the chaotic city and the more isolated islands, placing it firmly on my travel list.

Buxton Spice (Oonya Kempadoo) and Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
We’re back to my university days – I was lucky enough to be on a degree course with some great options – when I took a module on Caribbean women writers. I could have selected most of the books I read during this time, but I’ve chosen just two of my favourites. Kempadoo’s novel tells the story of a teenage girl growing up in Guyana, whilst Rhys’ better-known text, set as a prequel to Jane Eyre, imagines the “mad wife in the attic” as a young woman, meeting Mr Rochester, in 19th century Jamaica. Both books portrayed the sounds, smells, heat and culture of their countries in a way that brought them to life and prompted me to decide I need to travel around the Caribbean at some point.

The Chalet School (Elinor M. Brent Dyer)
This is a whole series of books, telling the story of a boarding school which starts off in Austria and ends up in Switzerland, via Guernsey, England and Wales, surviving various accidents, disasters and the Nazis. The school operated in English, French and German, and reading some of these books at a fairly young age, this was how I picked up my first words of a language that wasn’t English, sparking an interest in foreign languages and mainland Europe. I loved the descriptions of mountains, lakes and chalets, and it so happened that when my first opportunity to travel abroad arose, aged 11, it was to Switzerland, where I was delighted to see the landscapes of the Chalet School stories for myself.

Have any books inspired you to travel? Feel free to share yours in the comments.

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