The Travel Writing & Commentary category has 277 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 487 ratings. The most-rated is The Final Frontiersman.
The Final Frontiersman
Summary
The inspiration for The Last Alaskans - the eight-part documentary series on Animal Planet. Hundreds of hardy people have tried to carve a living in the Alaskan bush, but few have succeeded as consistently as Heimo Korth. Originally from Wisconsin, Heimo traveled to the Arctic wilderness in his feverous 20s. Now, more than four decades later, Heimo lives with his wife approximately 200 miles from civilization - a sustainable, nomadic life bounded by the migrating caribou, the dangers of swollen rivers, and the very exigencies of daily existence. In The Final Frontiersman, Heimo's cousin, James Campbell, chronicles the Korth family's amazing experience, their adventures, and the tragedy that continues to shape their lives. With a deft voice and in spectacular, at times unimaginable detail, Campbell invites us into Heimo's heartland and home. The Korths wait patiently for a small plane to deliver their provisions, listen to distant chatter on the radio, and go sledding at 44 degrees below zero - all the while cultivating the hard-learned survival skills that stand between them and a terrible fate. Awe inspiring and memorable, The Final Frontiersman is like a rustic version of the American dream and reveals for the first time a life most of us have never imagined: amid encroaching environmental pressures, apart from the herd, and alone in a stunning wilderness that - for now - remains the final frontier.
©2015 James Campbell (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Pilgrimage
Summary
The Pilgrimage paved the way to Paulo Coehlo's international best-selling novel The Alchemist. In many ways, these two volumes are companions - to truly comprehend one, you must read the other. Step inside this captivating account of Paulo Coehlo's pilgrimage along the road to Santiago. This fascinating parable explores the need to find one's own path. In the end, we discover that the extraordinary is always found in the ordinary and simple ways of everyday people. Part adventure story, part guide to self-discovery, this compelling tale delivers the perfect combination of enchantment and insight.
©2006 Paulo Coelho (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Travels with Charley in Search of America
Summary
A stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade—and a moving elegy for more innocent times. In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.
©1962 John Steinbeck (P)2011 Penguin
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding
Summary
Kristin Newman spent her 20s and 30s dealing with the stresses of her high-pressure job as a television comedy writer, and the anxieties of watching most of her friends get married and start families while she wrestled with her own fear of both. Not ready to settle down and yet loathe to become a sad-sack single girl, Kristin instead started traveling the world, often alone, for a few months each year, falling madly in love with attractive locals who provided moments of the love she wanted without the cost of the freedom she needed. She introduces listeners to the Israeli bartenders, Argentinian priests, Finnish poker players, and sexy Bedouins who helped her transform into "Kristin-Adjacent" on the road - a quieter, less judgmental, and, yes, sluttier version of herself at home. Ultimately, Kristin's adventures led her to a better understanding of what she was actually running away from at home and why every life hurdle seemed to put her on a transatlantic flight to the unknown. Equal parts laugh-out-loud storytelling; thoughtful, candid reflection; and wanderlust-inspiring travel tales, What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is a compelling and hilarious debut that will have listeners scrambling to renew their passports.
©2014 Kristin Newman (P)2014 Tantor
The Lost Continent
Summary
Hardly anyone ever leaves Des Moines, Iowa. But Bill Bryson did, and after 10 years in England he decided to go home, to a foreign country. In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America. From the Deep South to the Wild West, from Elvis' birthplace through to Custer's Last Stand, Bryson visits places he re-named Dullard, Coma, and Doldrum (so the residents don't sue or come after him with baseball bats). But his hopes of finding the American dream end in a nightmare of greed, ignorance, and pollution. This is a wickedly witty and savagely funny assessment of a country lost to itself, and to him.
©1989 Bill Bryson (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Lydiane, autour du monde
Summary
En 2013, Lydiane St-Onge décide de quitter carrière et vie sédentaire pour devenir une voyageuse à temps plein. Le regard qu'elle pose sur le monde, son approche humaine et responsable, en plus de son enthousiasme contagieux, ont rapidement inspiré des milliers de personnes à suivre ses aventures sur les réseaux sociaux, sur son site web ainsi qu'à la télé. «Me rendre compte que le voyage peut devenir plus qu'une passion, que toutes les personnes que je rencontre sont mises sur ma route pour une raison, et que le choc culturel est une invitation à surmonter mes peurs, c'est ce qui m'attendait quand j'ai décidé de tout risquer pour réaliser mes rêves. À travers mes expériences de voyage les plus marquantes, je vous partage mes découvertes et anecdotes, tantôt en Indonésie, au cœur de la savane africaine, dans les coulisses d'une émission de télé en Amérique du Sud, et bien plus loin encore!» PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2017 Les Éditions Goélette inc., Lydiane St-Onge (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
Jupiter's Travels
Summary
On October 6, 1973, Ted Simon knew there was no going back. He loaded up his 500cc Triumph Tiger in the pouring rain and said good-bye to London. Over four years he rode 64,000 miles round the world. Breakdowns, revolutions, war, a spell in prison, and a Californian commune were all part of his experience, which was colored variously by utter despair and unimaginable joy. He was treated as a spy, a god, a welcome stranger, and a curiosity. The extraordinary trip became a journey into his own soul, and for many others - including the bikers Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor - it is a pure inspiration. Rupert Degas, "the most versatile of narrators" (The Times), captures all the thrills and spills of Simon's experience and the timeless charm. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©1979 Ted Simon (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooks
The Masked Rider
Summary
Dysentery, drunken soldiers, and corrupt officials provide the background for Neil Peart's physical and spiritual cycling journey through West Africa. The prolific drummer for the rock band Rush travels through African villages, both large and small, and relates his story through journal entries and tales of adventure, while simultaneously addressing issues such as differences in culture, psychology, and labels. Literary and artistic sidekicks such as Aristotle, Dante, and Van Gogh join Peart and his cycling companions, reminding the listener that this is not just another travel book - it is a story of both external and introspective discovery and adventure.
©1996, 2004 Neil Peart (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Lean Out
Summary
Instant National Best Seller "Travel to the land of Couldn't Be More Timely." (Margaret Atwood on Lean Out, in the West End Phoenix) "What begins as one woman's critique of our culture of overwork and productivity ultimately becomes an investigation into our most urgent problems: vast inequality, loneliness, economic precarity, and isolation from the natural world. Henley punctures the myths of the meritocracy in a way few writers have. This is an essential book for our time." (Mandy Len Catron, author of How to Fall in Love with Anyone) A deeply personal and informed reflection on the modern world - and why so many feel disillusioned by it. In 2016, journalist Tara Henley was at the top of her game working in Canadian media. She had traveled the world, from Soweto to Bangkok and Borneo to Brooklyn, interviewing authors and community leaders, politicians and Hollywood celebrities. But when she started getting chest pains at her desk in the newsroom, none of that seemed to matter. The health crisis - not cardiac, it turned out, but anxiety - forced her to step off the media treadmill and examine her life and the stressful 21st century world around her. Henley was not alone; North America was facing an epidemic of lifestyle-related health problems. And yet, the culture was continually celebrating the elite few who thrived in the always-on work world, those who perpetually leaned in. Henley realized that if we wanted innovative solutions to the wave of burnout and stress-related illness, it was time to talk to those who had leaned out. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part investigation, Lean Out tracks Henley's journey from the heart of the connected city to the fringe communities that surround it. From early retirement enthusiasts in urban British Columbia to moneyless men in rural Ireland, Henley uncovers a parallel track in which everyday citizens are quietly dropping out of the mainstream and reclaiming their lives from overwork. Underlying these disparate movements is a rejection of consumerism, a growing appetite for social contribution, and a quest for meaningful connection in this era of extreme isolation and loneliness. As she connects the dots between anxiety and overwork, Henley confronts the biggest issues of our time.
©2020 Tara Henley (P)2020 Appetite by Random House
What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim
Summary
To celebrate her 50th birthday and face the challenges of midlife, Jane Christmas joins 14 women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Despite a psychic's warning of catfights, death, and a sexy, fair-haired man, Christmas soldiers on. After a week of squabbles, the group splinters, and the real adventure begins. In vivid, witty style, she recounts her battles with loneliness, hallucinations of being joined by Steve Martin, as well as picturesque villages and even the fair-haired man. What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim is one trip neither the author nor the listener will forget.
©2007 Jane Christmas (P)2015 Post Hypnotic Press Inc.
Ten Years a Nomad
Summary
Part memoir and part philosophical look at why we travel, filled with stories of Matt Kepnes' adventures abroad, an exploration of wanderlust and what it truly means to be a nomad.
"Matt is possibly the most well-traveled person I know...His knowledge and passion for understanding the world is unrivaled, and never fails to amaze me." --Mark Manson, New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Ten Years a Nomad is New York Times bestselling author Matt Kepnes’ poignant exploration of wanderlust and what it truly means to be a nomad. Part travel memoir and part philosophical look at why we travel, it is filled with aspirational stories of Kepnes' many adventures.
New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day, Matthew Kepnes knows what it feels like to get the travel bug. After meeting some travelers on a trip to Thailand in 2005, he realized that living life meant more than simply meeting society's traditional milestones, such as buying a car, paying a mortgage, and moving up the career ladder. Inspired by them, he set off for a year-long trip around the world before he started his career. He finally came home after ten years. Over 500,000 miles, 1,000 hostels, and 90 different countries later, Matt has compiled his favorite stories, experiences, and insights into this travel manifesto. Filled with the color and perspective that only hindsight and self-reflection can offer, these stories get to the real questions at the heart of wanderlust. Travel questions that transcend the basic "how-to," and plumb the depths of what drives us to travel - and what extended travel around the world can teach us about life, ourselves, and our place in the world.
Ten Years a Nomad is for travel junkies, the travel-curious, and anyone interested in what you can learn about the world when you don’t have a cable bill for a decade or spend a month not wearing shoes living on the beach in Thailand.
©2019 Matthew Kepnes (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Seven Years in Tibet
Summary
A landmark in travel writing, this is the incredible true story of Heinrich Harrer’s escape across the Himalayas to Tibet, set against the backdrop of the Second World War. Heinrich Harrer, already one of the greatest mountaineers of his time, was climbing in the Himalayas when war broke out in Europe. He was imprisoned by the British in India but succeeded in escaping and fled to Tibet. Settling in Lhasa, the Forbidden City, where he became a friend and tutor to the Dalai Lama, Heinrich Harrer spent seven years gaining a more profound understanding of Tibet and the Tibetans than any Westerner before him. Seven Years in Tibet was translated into 53 languages, became a best seller in the United States in 1954, and sold three million copies.
©1982 Heinrich Harrer (P)2012 Audible Ltd
Neither Here Nor There
Summary
Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here Nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student 20 years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture, and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.
©2004 Bill Bryson (P)2004 Random House Audiobooks
Notes from a Small Island
Summary
After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move back to the States for a while but before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy, place names like Farleigh Wallop and Shellow Bowells, people who said 'Mustn't grumble', and Gardeners' Question Time.
©2004 Bill Bryson (P)2004 Random House Audiobooks
Holy Cow!
Summary
After backpacking her way around India, Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. When a beggar at the airport reads her palm and insists she will one day return, and for love, she screams "Never!" and gives the country, and him, the finger.
But 11 years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah's life is posted to India, she quits her dream job as a national radio presenter to follow him to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. It seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love and it almost kills her, literally.
Often hilarious, sometimes hair-raising, and always entertaining, Holy Cow is a rollercoaster ride through a land of chaos and contradiction, from spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life, and her sanity, can survive.
©2002 Sarah Macdonald (P)2003 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
On the Plain of Snakes
Summary
The master of contemporary travel writing, Paul Theroux, immerses himself in the beautiful and troubled heart of modern Mexico. Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A 40-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico. Moving through the deserts just south of the Arizona border, Theroux finds a place brimming with charm, yet visibly marked by both the US border patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within. Attending local language and culinary schools, driving through the country and meeting its people, Paul Theroux gets under the skin of Mexico. From the writer praised for his 'curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms' (New York Times Book Review), On the Plain of Snakes is an urgent and mesmerising exploration of a region in conflict.
©2019 Paul Theroux (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
The Happiness of Pursuit
Summary
A remarkable book that will both guide and inspire, The Happiness of Pursuit reveals how anyone can bring meaning into their life by undertaking a quest. When he set out to visit all of the planet’s countries by age thirty-five, compulsive goal seeker Chris Guillebeau never imagined that his journey’s biggest revelation would be how many people like himself exist – each pursuing a challenging quest. And, interestingly, these quests aren’t just travel-oriented. On the contrary, they’re as diverse as humanity itself. Some involve exploration; others the pursuit of athletic or artistic excellence; still others a battle against injustice or poverty or threats to the environment. Everywhere that Chris visited he found ordinary people working toward extraordinary goals, making daily down payments on their dream. These “questers” included a suburban mom pursuing a wildly ambitious culinary project, a DJ producing the world’s largest symphony, a young widower completing the tasks his wife would never accomplish, and a teenager crossing an entire ocean alone - as well as a do-it-yourselfer tackling M.I.T.’s computer-science course, a nerd turning himself into real-life James Bond, and scores of others writing themselves into the record books. The more Chris spoke with these strivers, the more he began to appreciate the direct link between questing and long-term happiness -- how going after something in a methodical way enriches our lives -- and he was compelled to complete a comprehensive study of the phenomenon and extract the best advice. In The Happiness of Pursuit he draws on interviews with hundreds of questers, revealing their secret motivations, their selection criteria, the role played by friends and family, their tricks for solving logistics, and the importance of documentation.
©2014 Chris Guillebeau (P)2014 Random House Audio
Eureka: Finding the Line Between Desire and Contentment, Then Riding It
Summary
Who tries to ride deep into Iraq just to see if the news reports are accurate, ends up joining a street demonstration against someone else's government, or sticks their arm between the jaws of a wild mountain wolf-dog? After the success of his first book, In Search of Greener Grass, Graham Field hits the road again with his bargain-basement KLR650, recording his experiences in his inimitable and revealingly honest diary style. The Caucasus region is often overlooked by travelers, but Graham may inadvertently be about to change all that. A single pivotal event can transform any journey, and accepting rather than fighting that moment can have glorious consequences for the traveler. In this instant the result ensures a fantastic exploration of eastern Europe and beyond, the discovery of a hidden gem in Georgia, and meanderings that leave us all much richer. Ultimately, Eureka is an almost accidental realization that we cannot control our mood on the road, but merely embracing it can be the most enlightening travel experience of all.
©2018 Graham Field (P)2019 Graham Field
River Town
Summary
In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.
©2006 Peter Hessler (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Horizon
Summary
Shortlisted for 2019 Banff Mountain Book Festival From the National Book Award-winning writer, humanitarian, environmentalist and author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams: a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters - human, animal, and natural - that have shaped his extraordinary life. Poignantly, powerfully, it also asks "How do we move forward?" Taking us nearly from pole to pole - from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth - Barry Lopez, hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "one of our finest writers", gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves through decades of his life as it describes his travels to six regions of the world: from the Oregon coast where he lives to the northernmost reaches of Canada; to the Galapagos; to the Kenyan desert; to Botany Bay in Australia; and in the resounding last section of this magisterial book, unforgettably to the ice shelves of Antarctica. As he revisits his growing up and these myriad travels, Lopez also probes the long history of humanity's quests and explorations, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada; the colonialists who plundered Central Africa; an Enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific and a Native American emissary who arrived in Japan before it opened to the West. He confronts today's ecotourism in the tropics and visits the haunting remnants of a French colonial prison on Île du Diable in French Guiana. Through these journeys, and friendships forged along the way with scientists, archeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world. With tenderness and intimacy, Horizon evokes the stillness and the silence of the hottest, the coldest and the most desolate places on the globe. It speaks with beauty and urgency to the invisible ties that unite us; voices concern and frustration alongside humanity and hope; and looks forward to our shared future as much as it looks back at a single life. Revelatory, powerful, profound, this is an epic work of nonfiction that makes you see the world differently: a crowning achievement by one of our most humane voices - one needed now more than ever.
©2019 Barry Lopez (P)2019 Random House Canada