Book cover of The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

Book description

Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe by collecting the best writing on travel from the books that shaped him, as a reader and a traveler. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel enumerates “The Contents of Some Travelers’ Bags” and exposes “Writers Who…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Tao of Travel as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

For years, I’ve been rereading my favorite travel writers—not the guidebook purveyors but traveloguers such as Robert Macfarlane, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, and Paul Theroux.

In 2023, I reread Theroux’s The Tao of Travel, a compendium of pithy quotes that spans the globe. Some consider Theroux curmudgeonly. I find him refreshingly honest. In The Tao of Travel, he shines a light on writers-on-the-road as diverse as Kerouac, Twain, Flaubert, Orwell, Marco Polo, and Garcia Marquez.

The Tao of Travel isn’t constrained by a linear narrative. You can open it at any page and instantly enjoy the banquet you encounter. No…

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The High House by James Stoddard,

The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.

The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.

Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…

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