100 books like The Innocents Abroad

I love this book—and almost anything Mencken wrote—because he brings his unsparing but good-natured critical intelligence to bear on the politics of his day and on the cultural controversies of the time. Readers will realize if they don’t already, that the absurdities of the present campaign are nothing new, despite what we are told. Mencken’s independence spirit is also refreshing given the tiresome orthodoxies of political pundits today.

Mencken’s bracing intellect and his vivid, bouncy prose are a tonic at any time. He makes today’s journalists seem weak, unreflective, and shallow. 

I recommend this book because it uses Washington’s own expense accounts submitted to Congress—$400,000 worth of reimbursements he expects—to cast a comic light on the sober and solemn business of war. We tend to take figures like Washington so seriously that we do not see the human—and humorous—side of their lives and works. Kitman did a superb job of showing the lighter side of commanding the Continental Army without diminishing Washington’s greatness.

I love this book because it is consistently amusing when so many books on George Washington are so serious in tone. Kitman manages to humanize Washington, which too few authors do, and in the process, helps the reader keep his or her perspective on the momentous events of the American past. Also, the book is just a lot of fun. We take ourselves much too seriously these days, especially in a presidential campaign year.

I love this book because Flaubert has meticulously—and with a bracingly acidic intelligence—listed the cliches of his day…meaning what people, without thinking, automatically say about almost any subject, including the stock phrases that must accompany any subject. He exposes superstitions and absurdities that must have driven Flaubert nuts to hear. An American writer, Frank Sullivan, did something similar when he invented “the cliché expert” who would testify before Congress.

I recommend this book because we need to be reminded that our everyday speech and thinking are saturated with thoughtless absurdities. We take so much for granted that it is totally unexamined and ridiculous if it is only pointed out to us, which Flaubert does a masterful job of doing. As the book jacket puts it, “Throughout his life, Flaubert made it a game to eavesdrop for the cliché, the platitude, the borrowed and unquestioned idea with which the ‘right thinking’… show more.

I love this book, although it is not an “easy read” and should not be. Fischer meticulously catalogs the fallacies that even first-rate historians fall prey to in works that are important in our own time.

He names names and exposes weaknesses in their arguments (I wonder if any of his colleagues spoke to him after the book’s publication) and alerts the reader to errors of thinking and argument that plague historical writing and, I’d add, journalistic writing (and speaking) as well. All reporters should have to read this book, and all well-informed citizens would benefit as well. 

Wilson Heflin’s indispensable but unfinished account of Melville’s life at sea from 1841-45, here lovingly edited by two experts on Melville and maritime life, unearths the full story and factual basis of Melville’s Pacific travels. Drawing from logbooks, consular records, newspaper accounts, and museum archives from around the world, Heflin reveals what Melville knew and fictionalized in his books. Highly readable for novices and scholars alike, this book provides an exciting entrée into early shipboard adventures and dangers and a chronicle of places and people around the globe—many long gone. 

For readers with wanderlust who long to hit the road, Gap Year Girl is a pleasure to read.

It is the author’s travel adventure memoir about how she and her husband, late Baby Boomers, retraced their backpacking travels abroad from much earlier years. Bohr describes what it’s like to kiss your job goodbye, sell your possessions, pack your bags, and take off on a quest for adventure.

Readers will be intrigued and inspired by this account of a couple’s experiences on an unconventional, past-the-blush-of-youth quest. Bohr blends the details of travel, culture, and history with humor and the intimacy of her life.

She shares that seven weeks into their journey, homesickness hit them hard in a cold, ancient village in southwestern France, but they rallied and went on to continue their adventure. 

This is an enjoyable read, almost like a detective story, but it is full of information about the ancient Greeks and their contacts with the Druids of Gaul, and most likely Britain and Ireland, indicated by now lost ancient texts that remain in a few scant references.

This will help any reader gain a better understanding of the ancient Pagan world and Druidry in its original form, long before it was revived.

The author gets ahold of his mother’s copy of Frommer's 1967 Europe on Five Dollars a Day and uses it as his basis for a contemporary visit. Like his mother, I, too, did the tour in 1967. I was curious to see what had happened to Europe and to my view of it. Of course, most of the restaurants no longer exist, and $5 dollars a day was more like $50 dollars a day, but this travel memoir is full of funny, disastrous, and touching adventures. I admit to a fondness for funny disasters.

Mass tourism is a funny world, and occasionally it deserves to be skewered with a wink and a smile. This tongue-in-cheek satire is so sharp I continue to cut my fingers on its pages, instantly recognizing the absurdity of some of my own adventures in Eastern and Central Europe.

This Spinal Tap for guidebooks looks at fictional hotels, towns, food, and activities. There are also follow-up guidebooks, one that roasts a mythical Southeast Asian country in a similar fashion and another that pokes fun at a fictional yet familiar country in Latin America.

Veteran travellers, and especially backpackers, will have a riot. 

I met Bill Bryson once, and we subsequently exchanged a few letters.

‘Knowing him’ gave an extra dimension to his writing and humour, because he’s acerbic with the pen and yet so gentle and shy as a person.

When we met, he was giving a talk on the importance of hedgerows in our ‘Green and Pleasant Land’, and he has always inspired me to appreciate the privilege of being British (He is American).

Sometimes it can be hard to remember..! One thing is for sure: British humour is unique, and I will never fail to appreciate that. Neither Here Nor There was the first Bryson I read, but you could pick any of his travel works.

He’s got such a wonderful style and humour, you can’t really go wrong.