I like this list of "backpackers books," compiled by Bookride.
I am not sure which books backpackers carry with them these days so this list may be a little out of date. The concept of backpacker books goes back to the days of the hippy trail when travellers would carry such classics as the I Ching, the Tibetan Book of the Dead or anything by Herman Hesse. A backpacker classic should have an element of profundity, preferably mystical -if not it should have cult status or be a statement about who you really are. There is an element of self discovery in setting off - the path to enlightenment, the journey inwards...A backpacker book is not a 'beach read'--the book must be worth the weight and space it takes up and should be reverentially handed on to other travellers or left in a hotel or bus station for another seeker to chance upon.
Here's a snippet of the list:
Backpacker ClassicsPatrick Suskind. Perfume
Umberto Eco. Name of the Rose (also Foucault's Pendulum)
Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse
Irvine Welsh. Trainspotting.
Borges. Fictions
Tolkien. The Hobbit (sometimes seen read until it has fallen apart)
Bolano. The Savage Detectives (heavy)
Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code (light)
Maldoror & A Rebours (for the decadent traveller)
Shakespeare. King Lear ( a teacher at my school read it every morning or so he said)
The Duke of Pirajno. A Cure for Serpents (for the traveller in Libya)
Di Lampedusa's deathless 'The Leopard' - another book by an Italian duke. Why can't any of our dukes write a decent book?
Tao te Ching
Popol Vuh: A Sacred Book of the Maya
Cormac McCarthy. All The Pretty Horses
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Jack Kerouac. On The Road
Raja Rao: On the Ganga Ghat
From the list:
James Joyce. Ulysses (Odyssey thin paper version)
Goodness. I can't imagine being on the road with one book, and it being Ulysses.
Jason Roberts. A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
I read this all through Mexico. It was great. Made me reevaluate the idea of handicap and fear.
Desert Solitare by Edward Abbey has been my hitch hiking and train hopping friend on many a lonely journey. I couldn't bring myself to take Days of War Nights of Love.
zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
John Fowles.The Magus
I've read this 3x's camping out for concerts.
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.
The Illiad, Homer. (for bonus points, I bought this in Çanakkale, Turkey, next to the ruins of Troy)
Anne Frank's Diary. (bought in Amsterdam, traded for Birdsong somewhere in Eastern Europe.)
I handed Birdsong over to an English girl in Paris, and brought the Illiad home with me. I've still got it. And it's well past time that I got the heck over to Europe again...
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
I'll cop to carting around the Borges and "A Rebours" from the above list, but "Black Spring" by Henry Miller remains my perennial travel book.
"Gravity's Rainbow" by Pynchon. Well worth the bulk. It traveled with me for months through SE Asia.
i was just on the road for a month, reading in my tent my headlamp.
i went through the first two "Abarat" books by Clive Barker, and then moved onto Shantideva's "Way of the Bodhisattva". The Abarat books were a little bulky, so i mailed them to my gf with letters and other ephemerea tucked in as i finished.
Shantideva's book will make you want to stay in the woods, if you don't already.
"Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code (light) "
really? REALLY?
The Drifters by James Michener is as relevant as it was in the 70s as it is now. Michener's other popcorn books got more coverage but the DRIFTERS got me at 24 to pack up my day job and road to mediocrity and head to Pamplona! I have never looked back. And it actually says so much about our culture that has not changed. Rereading it now at the age of 38 it made me realise that the MAN also read it and realised that a stupid population is a managable population and since the 80s there hass been a steady decline in the questioning of facts. Its a must read and I think we need to find this generation's Bob Dylans and so on...
Damn fine list, that.
digging wayback:
Cosmic Consciousness - Richard Bucke
anything by Ouspensky
Walden - Thoreau
The Way of the White Clouds - Angarika Govinda
Be Here Now - Ram Dass
Perennial Philosophy - Huxley
anything from Shambala Press. J.G. Ballard. Evelyn Underhill. 'The Little Prince'
fare forward, voyager!
Yes, JPhilby #9, Walden was often my backpacker book. I'm surprised this was left off the list, since this seemed like a common choice. I also remember that Douglas Adams was a common choice for peoples' backpacks.
Sticking with 19th century American lit, I also remember bringing Emerson's Nature with me, and for some reason Moby Dick.
These days, I've got those three, plus Adams, plus hundreds more on my PDA. So much for being "worth the weight and space it takes up". =D
Suskind's Perfume? Really?
It's a great read, but hardly contains "an element of profundity, preferably mystical -if not it should have cult status or be a statement about who you really are".
Little profundity in the book, excepting maybe the detailing of obsession. Mystical? The extraction of essences might be considered that, but I don't think that was the sense of the word which was being reffered to. And the last bit doesn't apply either...unless you're an obsessed maniac.
I haven't clicked through to the list, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance should be on there, as would The art of War (mostly read by poseurs, in my experience) and The Prince. Maybe some Plato (the sympoia, Republic), the Baghadvatgita.
And for myself I'd list certain sci-fi there, too; Asimov's robots and the first foundations, Gibson, AC Clarke, Brin, PK Dick. Many of these are much more telling about the person reading them than many other so called 'deep' books (I'm looking at you, Coelho! You simple, oh-aint-I-clever-look-at-my-simplicity-but-actually-simple-fairy-tale-morality-play hack!), and contain much more about human nature, human and technological potential and the nature and possibility of the universe than other fiction which merely purports to do so.
I'll go look at the list now :)
-Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
-Jonathan livingston seagull
-Atlas shrugged
wat about snow crashe...? it owns
There aren't enough lists. More lists, dammit.
Alex Garland: The Beach
Oh, I'm missing *the* book on backpackers: Are you experienced by William Sutcliffe.
Hilarious & highly recognizable.
Hopelessly out of date of course, but:
Moby Dick and
V, by T. Pynchon
both of which serendipitously fell into my hands while wandering about Europe.
I also spent one memorable day holed up in my tent in the Rockies in the rain reading Plath's "Ariel".
I never actually got around to reading "On the Road" until after my first road trip. I still remember the rush of watching my own experiences unfold on the page.
Peter Moore:
Really entertaining and sometimes it matches the situation you're currently in perfectly.
As for Kerouac, I'd much prefer The Dharma Bums. It's about backpacking and profound experience! Also, Ryõkan's (or other) zen poetry.
This was the reason I bought an ebook reader. Bring everything.
You almost forgot the MICHELIN Guide :)
Whilst I might be rather unpopular with this sentiment, anybody leaving copies of The Da Vinci Code around in youth hostels, hotels or bus stations should quite frankly be arrested for attempted mental assault. Look at it in the context of the other books on that list and tell me it really belongs in there with them! The writing is not a scratch on any of the other books there...
Borges' "Fictions" is one of my favourite companions of all time, and I've recently discovered Italo Calvino's short stories which have a similar fantastical quality, but are all inspired by Italian fascism in the early 20th-century. If you ignore the allegorical aspect, they're all quite Borges-like to some degree, so worth it as an option.
And personally a little surprised that there is no Hemingway in the list.
"reverentially handed on to other travellers or left in a hotel or bus station for another seeker to chance upon" - nonsense. Judging by the used bookstores around backpacking destinations local to Sydney Australia, they're to be on-sold upon completion to add to funds required for staying just that much longer. Or eating.
Not that I've done a hell of a lot of backpacking, but I think a good travelling book is one that is large and meaty, something that you feel sure will last you should you be stuck for 12 hours in an obscure bus station. (I was stuck for several hours awaiting pickup in a Nigerian hotel lobby on a business trip, and had no book to read so was reduced to making lists of flights I had taken in my life, and airports I had passed through.)
A suitable book might be chunky enough that you know you could turn to it to occupy you in such an emergency but also forbidding enough that you would generally try to look at the view or talk to fellow travellers if possible. I remember taking War and Peace Interailing round bits of Europe for a couple of weeks one summer, and I didn't finish it then (or indeed ever). What you don't want is some small book you're very keen to read anyway and zip through on your first day.
Or you could take a reasonably relevant big book you can dip into... for instance, Herodotus while travelling around Greece.
Harvard Classics list. Can't go wrong. Everything right.
Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment. Read this in Cuba, slightly mismatch between place and setting..
#15 You are so right. The Da Vinci Code is a piece of lightweight fluff just like the other Dan Brown books (although I haven't read his new one).
It doesn't deserve to be on the list for a dozen reasons not least of which is that it only takes a few hours to read.
rushdie moor's last sigh
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen ticks all the right boxes, especially if you're in Nepal/Himalayas.
If you have Name Of The Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, why would you need The da Vinci Code?... (yes i know these weren't all in one bag) :|
The DaVinci Code is the book that takes all the hoaxes in Foucault's Pendulum seriously.
Petrarch's "Ascent of Mount Ventoux" is a perfect way to start a day hike in the mountains, but it's too short for backpacking.
i take 'the essential hemmingway' because it contains his shortish story 'fiesta' which always puts be in the right mood for travelling based revels.
When I go backpacking I always take the the Encyclopedia Britannica. The first edition, not the inferior later editions.
Dunno about you lot, but all the backpacker places I have ever stayed in have had a generous selection (sometimes left by me) of Terry Pratchett and Iain (M or otherwise) Banks in addition to the usual. Mind you, most of my backpackin' days were spent in Western Australia (Hi Rod!).
Going backpacking I take magazines and newspapers that I have no problem throwing away after. Space is at a premium! Any hard reading is done on my laptop.
By the time I've finished a day (or three or four) on the trail I'm all fantasied-philosophied-mysticisimed out and am ready for something a little different. I've had enough of deep thinking and universe explaining from my crazy-ass best friend/hiking partner and hunger for a little escape from my escape. Clive Cussler is my reading choice every time.
I'm suprised that Gregory David Roberts' "Shantaram" didn't make it in. I work in a backpacker's hostel and can't name the number of people who read this book, then use it as a catalyst for going to India. There always seem to be a couple of discarded copies floating round rec room, too...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantaram_(novel)
Peppermint Patty
Re Dan Brown: there are backpackers and backpackers.
Inclusion in the list may be deviously-disguised product placement for his new book though he hardly needs the publicity.Or perhaps it is based on the mountains of abandoned copies flung at the clergy of Saint-Suplice who patiently explain to those demanding to see the exact location of the crime scene that the book is fiction (I will not say cheap - we have a crisis after all).
Speaking of which what better way to beat the crisis than attract the tourists
With a book: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/sacred-sites/da-vinci-code.htm
with a crisis: http://www.thewallstreetexperience.com/
with a war: http://www.hinterlandtravel.com/
Ah Milo Minderbinder, you are alive and well.
Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" is on the Backpackers Classics list, a much better option than Mr Brown's and one of my own first travelling favourites.
And I thought someone would have mentioned 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert Pirsig. Read 2x while traveling in Costa Rica.
I found a copy of don quixote in an airport bin, that did me a while.
almost everywhere I went in asia I found a copy of "Mr Nice" by Howard Marks or "Howard Marks' big book of dope stories"
@ #1 Damn you beat me to it :-P I thought that was oddly missing from the list.
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
I'm shocked A Walk in the Woods isn't on this list. Whenever I go camping, at least one person asks me if I've read it. (I have. I loved it.)
No "Shantaram" on the list?...poor show.
Essential backpacker reading IMO
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson. Surprised it hasn't come up already.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude - posting this on behalf of Tom, currently journeying through Vienna, hopefully he packed his copy...
Haven't read it while travelling, but "Divine Right's Trip" from the Whole Earth catalog would be fine fare for a hippie walkabout. I read it in the original (in the margins of WE), then found a paperback copy...
Stephen King: Cujo, while on solo 3 day hike thru the Maine woods. Bad Idea
The Illuminatus Trilogy was my backpacker book, seems to fit the criteria.
I say
The Gunslinger (Stephen King)
Alive (Piers Paul)
Into the Wild (John Krakauer)
and
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
ALL need to be on that list. The Da Vinci Code needs to be tossed in the nearest dumpster as quickly as possible (whether traveling or not.)
Tristes Tropiques accompanied me on many travels. And, for camping backpackers, has anyone mentioned Darwin yet?
Alive - Piers Paul Read
Carlos Castanedas' book lived in my backpack for a few years but I never could finish it.
Blue Highways: A Journey into America (William Least-Heat Moon)
Our dukes are off writing jazz.
And #9 : Consider Night Flight (Vol de Nuit) by St. Exupery, a story of a pilot trying to land during a storm. Particularly poignant since St. Ex himself died flying. It's a beautiful book with more intensity and subtly than Le Petit Prince. I haven't read it, but I'd imagine Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), his memoir, is also a good read on the road.
"Dune" certainly fits the description.
A "backpacker" touring from city to city on foot elsewhere is not a "backpacker" climbing peaks, fishing in lakes, and camping in the wilderness as it is in the US.
My favorite thing to read when I travel is fiction set in the area where I'm traveling. When I was staying in a hostel in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1994 I picked up a copy of Children of the Arbat by Anatoli Rybakov. It was perfect. Thank you, anonymous fellow traveler! P.S. I never did finish the book I brought with me (Foucault's Pendulum).
A Walk in the Woods anyone?
The Talisman - Stephen King is always great for a journey.
I had no idea that I was conforming to type when I threw a copy of "The Leopard" into my backpack. As I remember, the book (fancy edition) and the backpack (cheap-ass nylon thing I got at the last minute before leaving) cost exactly the same.
shantaram, yes!
zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance! yes!
on the road! Yes!
perfume! yes!
i'd like to include (read whilst tramping europe).
unbearable lightness of being
down & out in paris & london - george orwell
life of pi
"Knots" by R.D. Liang.
A very thin book which will have you scratching your head, thinking about it.
"They are playing a game. They are playing a game about not playing a game. If I let them *know* they are playing a game, ..."
And anything by Calvino.
And anything by Calvino.
esp The Baron in the Trees!
@vagueware #15. I believe the proper term for leaving behind a copy of the Da Vinci Code is littering.
The most recent books at the bottom of my backpack were War for the Oaks, On the Road, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Though since I have a microSD card with 2Gb of ebooks, (including Little Brother,) I'm more likely to run out of batteries than reading material.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bookcrossing.com so far.
"I believe the proper term for leaving behind a copy of the Da Vinci Code is littering."
Ha! +1
/Though I didn't hate the book, at all.
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
I like to read Kurt Vonnegut, while backpacking. His books are short, and therefore, light, and you can easily finish one, in the course of a two or three day trip. For longer journeys, I like Pynchon.
I am saving several Vonnegut titles, for future excursions...
"Knulp" by Hermann Hesse. Can't say I've ever taken it on a backpacking trip (and it's probably too short for that anyhow), but reading it certainly made me feel like setting off on the long and winding.
Infinite Jest, despite being a heavy *@#@er.
I second The Magus, Calvino, and Kerouac. I'd like to add Regarding Wave by Gary Snyder and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Poetry is light
I was in Indonesia for six months with a copy of the newly released, HARDCOVER Infinite Jest, and while I adore me some David Foster Wallace, it's not really what you need when you're hanging out in a cabin, hallucinating because you've got the beginnings of typhus. I was delighted to swap it for a stack of Jane Austen and a copy of Dune. Hopefully it brought someone down the line some joy.
Umberto Eco, very good choices.
- Mr. Bluesky
Don Quixote, altho a massive book, would be a great companion on camping nights, etc.. my favorite book hands down.
This is not my experience based on the book exchanges of the various hostels I've stayed in, with the exception of Dan Brown. Far too many Daniel Steele and Clive Bloody Cussler books out there for this to be an accurate representation of what most backpackers seem to read.
I ran away from home as a teenager, and a few miles out of town stopped at my favourite bookstore and asked for a title appropriate to the occasion.
After a moment of confusion, the owner pointed me to "My Life as a Fake" by Peter Carey. A very good book. (Also in my backpack at that time: Atlas Shrugged, a Bible, and My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok.) (Yes, it was a heavy backpack.)
Yup. I Ching is a good one.
I'd throw in "Zen mind, Beginners Mind" and some sci-fi. Probably Baxter. Y'know; for fun.
And does anyone have the same problem I do--if you fail to finish a book on the trip, odds are you never will? Many's the time I've taken some ambitious and never-opened book on a trip, only find that once I get back home, no matter how strenuously I was reading on the trip, I've lost all interest.
@50 & 66 = yes Shantaram would be excellent
@55 = the only problem with illuminatus trilogy is that it could make you go insane, which may not be the best when you are all out on your own.
as far as 'light' reading goes, i would think that Paolo Coehlo beats Dan Brown any day. "the alchemist" is the one that people usually read first, but several of them are better than that one.
I used to take The Golden Bough.
For mountaineers you can't go wrong with The Burgess Brothers Book of Lies.
Someone above mentioned St. Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars. I just finished it and highly recommend it.
Also, Necroscope and Titus Crow by Brian Lumley
Spotted in the toilet in "Monkey Republic" Backpacker bar in Shianoukeville Cambodia "If toilet out of paper, please use copies of Da Vinci Code from the book swap".
I agree with all the folks appalled by the inclusion of Dan Brown on that list. Yeach. What a waste of my time that was (Angels and Demons, only because my Mom told me I'd love it)
I would add The Book of Flying by Keith Miller and Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin. Both short reads but they encourage getting lost in thought after. I read The Book of Flying twice on a seven day trip to Rome.
Carlos Castaneda:
A Separate Reality
The Active Side of Infinity
Stephen King - The Stand
Ouspensky - In Search of the Miraculous
Theodore Illion - Darkness Over Tibet
William James- Varieties of Religious Experience
Hunter S. Thompson - The Curse of Lono, Hell's Angels or Fear and Loathing in LV
Roadside Picnic, Chingachgook?
In the matter of The Da Vinci code it is a book that travelers are seen reading, the list does not differentiate between good and bad. It is an easy book to dislike, too easy-you can feel clever and superior for hating it and be annoyed at the wealth of the hack who wrote it whereas the really bad books are those shallow works that fool you into thinking they are profound- some even win the Booker.
Lucius Shepherd. Life during wartime.
On a 6-week low-cost trek through Mexico, I found my favorite read was Maugham's The Razor's Edge. I found the contrast of wealth and gentle society in the book to be a stimulating contrast to the more humble environments I enjoyed traveling through.
Reading about low-brow travel while experiencing some low-brow travel seems silly actually, I don't know why books suck as On The Road would be good while traveling... you are in the middle of writing your OWN story, no need to 'plagiarize'
Stephen King's "The Stand" should be pretty trippy. especially now with that H1N1 stuff.
I'm currently in Spain with the Illuminati trilogy. Must be the fifth time I read it, and I discover new stuff every time.
Other than this...French/Russian classics, poetry (I like Baudelaire), philosophy (Nieztche, Plato, Hegel...the hairier the better).
Haven't seen _The Good Earth_ by Pearl S. Buck on here yet.
Maybe not a "backpacker" book, but would be great if read in the right place.
Also glad to see all the Calvino readers here. I recently discovered this fantastic writer. Bravo for Baron in the Trees! Calvino automatically made my top five on the merits of this book alone, along with D. Adams, and Tolkien.
Vonnegut: Galapagos
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
I don't know why books suck as On The Road....
Maybe it doesn't live up to its hype, but I wouldn't say it sucks.
Whaaat?!? How can you pick Lear over Hamlet? Or Macbeth?
Whaaat?!? How can you pick Lear over Hamlet? Or Macbeth?
Shhhhh! Please, "The Scottish Play."
My favorite book to read while wandering is "Chronicles" by Bob Dylan. Excellent read, gets you in the mood to write, and always helps to strike up conversation on the road.
I just read Tao Te Ching earlier this week. It's almost entirely nonsense.
I was given a few Henry Rollins books while travelling in Europe. Most of his books are diaries of his travels around the world - though some contain some dark short stories. The man's not given his due. Great stuff.
FM
2K #92:
Chingachgook
If you're talking about "Last of the Mohicans", what an awesome choice. Exceptionally great if you're backpacking in the Eastern US.
Although ...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/34/Chingachgook-ASIN-B00005NFMB.jpg
Chingachgook, the Great Schlong?
Yeah, I know, it's German.
hasn't ANYONE, for the love of all that's holy, mentioned Louis de Bernières? FFS people, you should be ashamed of yourselves!
If I were to start hoofing it cross country, and wanted to impress some stranger with a literary work tucked in my ratty backpack, I would probably include Kurt Vonnegut's Man Without a Country.
Why is it still called "Tao De Ching" when it clearly should be referred to by its modern Romanization of "Dao de Jing"?
No-one will ever read this reply but...
@ 105 TEKNA2007
No. I meant Roadside Picnic, the book written by the Strugatskys, later made into the best ever science fiction film; 'Stalker' by Andrei Tarkovsky.
See these cultural artefacts.