Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Feature Travel

It's Tuesday, so that means it's time for my second-ever Top Ten Tuesday link-up with The Broke and the Bookish. Man, I knew participating in TTT was going to be hard, because I have an absolutely horrible memory. In fact, that's the main reason I started this blog -- so I'd have a quick and easy reference for books I've read. But it's fun, too, to have to (attempt to) think back over all the books I've read and reminisce.

This week's prompt is books that deal with travel in some way, which is fitting getting into summer vacation season. Some of the books I've chosen are memoirs, some are fiction and some are related to travel in ways that probably don't quite fit with the theme, but whatever. Here goes:

Books I've Read:

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"My Life in France," Julia Child's autobiography, is one of my favorite books! I read a good chunk of it on the beach when we lived in Hawaii and thoroughly enjoyed being transported to France with Julia as she explored Paris and learned to cook. (FYI, the picture behind my blog header is of "My Life in France" and gorgeous Bellows beach on Oahu.) Read my review here.

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Now this is a true travel book! "A Walk in the Woods" is Bill Bryson's account of his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail with a (somewhat overweight) friend. It was funny and fascinating! Read my review here.

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"Outlander" deals with travel in a different way -- time travel from 1940s England to mid-1700s Scotland. I absolutely loved this book, which is a total page-turner with an epic romance, suspense, even a bit of humor -- it was enthralling! Some day soon I hope to read the second book in the series, but that's a bit of a commitment because it's a mere, oh, 750 pages long.

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I love the Percy Jackson books, especially the newer "Heroes of Olympus" installments. In this Greek mythology kids' series, Percy is a teenage Greek demigod and he and his friends from Camp Half-Blood are frequently charged with saving the planet from Greek monsters, rogue gods and catastrophes. They travel across America (and later the world) to do so.

I'm anxiously awaiting the release of latest book, "The House of Hades," in October. Read my review of "The Son of Neptune," first in the "Heroes of Olympus" series, here.

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"The Paris Wife" was one of the best books I read last year. It's about Hadley, Ernest Hemingway's often-overlooked first wife. Hadley moved with Ernest from Chicago to Paris, where they mixed and mingled with the "Lost Generation" of writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. Read my review here.

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Speaking of the best books I read last year, the first two books in Deborah Harkness's All Souls trilogy are at the top of the list. "Shadow of Night" is the second installment in this supernatural series and involves travel back in time and to a different continent. Read my review here.

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I had mixed feelings about this post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel which is set in outer space. I know some people who are just as obsessed with "Ender's Game" as I am with Harry Potter, but I just wasn't quite that taken with it. However, the plot has stuck with me many months later and I'm looking forward to the movie version of the book, which comes out this fall. Read my review here.

Book I'm Reading Now:

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In this memoir, author Eloisa James moves to Paris for a year with her husband and two kids after a cancer scare. The book is composed of daily blurbs and a few expanded essays compiled from James's Facebook and Twitter posts about day-to-day life in France and getting settled in in a romantic new place where she doesn't speak the language.


Residing On My Bookshelf, To Be Read At Some Point In My Lifetime:

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After being left by his fiancee days before their wedding, the author took his brother on his would-be honeymoon to Costa Rica. The trip sparked a lust for life in the brothers, inspiring them to quit their jobs and spend two years traveling the world.

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I grabbed "Fried Eggs With Chopsticks: One Woman's Hilarious Adventure Into a Country and a Culture Not Her Own" at the thrift store a couple years ago because the cover caught my eye. Oh, and it was 50 cents. Eventually I'll get around to reading about the author's seemingly humorous adventures and mishaps in China.