The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge

I’m not planning any further actual travel this summer, and I’m a great fan of travel writing, so how could I resist the Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge? The challenge originates with Lesley of A Life in Books, and the rules are simple. Participants must read six books that connect with the ‘armchair traveling’ theme between July 1st and December 31st. The books need not be limited to conventional travel writing. Fiction or non-fiction will fit the bill so long as the location is integral to the book. Participants are asked to post their list of six at the outset, although making substitutions along the way is cheerfully permitted.

A number of the books that I’m plotting to read in connection with the Reading Across Borders Challenge could do double duty here. But there are many other books on my towering TBR pile that also fit the theme. Here’s a list of twelve from which I expect to carve out my six challenge reads:

1. James Baldwin, Another Country (New York).
2. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (North Africa).
3. Kathleen Jamie, Findings (Scotland).
4. Alfred Kazin, A Walker in the City (New York).
5. Andrea MacPherson, Beyond the Blue (Dundee, Scotland).
6. Jeremy Mercer, Time Was Soft There (Paris).
7. Mary Morris, The River Queen (Mississippi River).
8. Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (London).
9. Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey (France).
10. Terry Teachout, City Limits (Missouri).
11. Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (Europe & the Middle East).
12. Virginia Woolf, The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life (London).

Wish me “bon voyage”!