Top Ten Travelogues and Memoirs for 2020 — thatawaydad.com
By: Todd Smith
Tags: Memoir, Traveling, Travelogue, Top 10, Travel Writing

Here are my 2020 Top Ten Travelogues/Memoirs that I have found inspirational and gave me insight into other countries in the world. I hope these books help you find a journey of discovery about yourself and others.

In April 2008 Ed Stafford set out to be the first person to ever walk the entire length of the Amazon River. This book details his two and half year journey walking across South America from the beginning of the river to its huge delta.

He faced hostile indigenous communities, pit vipers, electric eels, and the constant drudgery of cutting his way through the jungle in water that went to his head.

This was a fast read. I definitely have no interest in attempting this walk through the jungle. Just the amount of time it took and the sheer number of problems he faced, it was a lot to battle on a daily basis.

It is probably one of the more exciting adventure travelogues I’ve read. I like to hike and now have a better understanding of tough it would be to go through a jungle.

Overall, it was a good adventure read.

The author is a dad of two young girls and he takes his family on a whirlwind tour to New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and lastly Kansas.

He analyzes each of these communities and how they are different from each other and his family’s life back in northern Virginia.

I think what I enjoyed the most was his details on what his family faced in living in each of these places.

This would be from mosquitoes in Costa Rica to bicycling in traffic in the Netherlands it was quite an adventure. He shared the struggles they faced along with the fun and exciting times, too.

Ayser Salman was born in Iraq and then moved to the US with her family when she was a toddler. She grew up in the US but then moved to Saudi Arabia during her middle school years then back to the US. That is the background of her complicated life.

What I learned from her memoir is the world she faced as a Muslim. It is sometimes comical and other times heartwarming. I learned a lot about the discrimination and misunderstandings she faced growing up.

Strangely enough, I could understand some of her outsider feelings, since I have faced myself as a gay man.

This book educated me on what it is like to be Muslim and I am glad I read it. I think if more people read books about Muslims or people outside their culture the world would be a better place.

Miss Norma had spent a lifetime with her husband Leo and then in a short time her husband Leo passed away. Her son, Tim, to help her with the loss, invited her into his life on the road.

She was facing a dire prognosis and she decided that instead of spending her last months in bed she would have an adventure with her son.

I think this is a very important book for families who have to face the end of life issues for their parents.

I have started on this journey as my parents are starting to age and this book gave me a lot to consider in how to face their future health issues. End of life is always a touchy subject and the book did a good job of talking about this subject.

The son let his mother decide how she wanted to spend the last few months of her life. She did things, like riding in a hot air balloon, seeing the country, and being in the front row of a professional basketball game, that she had never done before.

In the end, I missed hearing about Norma, so I became emotionally invested in her story. Overall I enjoyed the journey. I hope that when it comes my time I can also be happy with my last days and spend them with the people that I love.

This author previously wrote The Sex Lives of Cannibals on his true-life adventure of living on the South Pacific island of Tarawa facing feral dogs and machete-wielding neighbors.

Now he has returned to the Pacific and living in Vanuatu and Fiji. In this book, he faces an island where most natives feast on kava and get stoned.

Here he faces off against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes and getting swept into the laid-back life of the islanders.

Then, his wife becomes pregnant and they have to leave Vanuatu for Fiji, which had recently faced a coup. Here he learns about the differences between the natives and Indians and what led to this coup.

Along with the exploration in the culture he faces parenthood and this might be the biggest obstacle he faces yet in whether to stay in paradise or go home.

I liked this book overall and it even educated me on the different cultures that can be found on these Pacific islands.

He has a humorous style to his writing which helps in making the books entertaining as well, which makes it a fun read.

In this book the author shared his coming out story and raising his family long before it was legal for gay couples to even be married.

The 1990s and early 2000s were a very different era for gay parents with kids. It was sad to hear all the discrimination they faced back then. Times are better, but as a gay dad myself I still on occasion have odd comments as a lone father out with my kid.

I like that he shared everything from the happy times to the difficult times in being a divorced father with two kids and a long-term relationship with a gay man.

It was an inspirational book that I enjoyed reading.

The book is an autobiography of Julia Child’s time in France and mostly takes place before she became a star with her PBS television series “The French Chef.”

The book does not include recipes but does talk a lot about French cooking, of course. I am not a cook and don’t enjoy cooking, so the parts of the book about this subject did not interest me as much.

Although, I enjoyed her descriptions of life in France just after World War II and her difficulties in publishing her first book. The book was a good read if you want to learn more about Child’s life and you like cooking.

Jordon Romero is the youngest person to climb Mount Everest at age thirteen and the youngest to climb the tallest mountains on the seven continents at age fifteen. This book recounts his time climbing these mountains.

It was an easy read and he presented well what each mountain was like. He did a good job sharing some of the difficulties he faced with going up sheer peaks and the freezing cold at the top.

What I found amazing was he went up to his first mountain, Australia’s Mount Kosciuszko at age ten and then Denali at 20,320 feet at age 11. It is hard to imagine doing this at such a young age. My son is five and a half and I just can’t imagine him climbing mountains like this in a few years.

He does describe being in tears when he was younger when things were not going his way. You can really tell how he grows up by the time he makes it to Everest.

I was really interested in his relationship with his dad and stepmom that went up with them into these heights. I think the family aspect was the most interesting part. They really supplied him with the positive reinforcement that he needed and supported him on his goal in doing this. It is an amazing story.

This is a true story of a man who builds a strong bond with a dog he met in the Gobi desert.

Dion Leonard is an ultra-marathon runner and came across a stray dog that eventually he named Gobi. The dog began to run with him across the desert. He became a companion as he raced.

After finishing the race and coming in the second he decides to adopt this dog. Dion has faced a life of adversity with the death of his stepfather at a young age and his mother’s struggle with the aftermath. He saw a kinship in the dog which had been a stray now wanting to find a permanent home.

Yet, bringing the dog home would soon be its own journey, and the struggles they face in making this possible make this a sweet book about a man and his dog and finding a way for them to stay together.

Tony James Slater went to Ecuador to do his part in helping animals that have been harmed by people with the hope they can be rehabilitated and brought back to the wild while working at a wildlife refuge.

He saw this as a chance to see how tough he was when he came to going into a panther’s cage and not being eaten. He learned the dangers of welding by not doing it correctly and being temporarily blind.

Then he faced the cultural differences of living in Latin America and not knowing the language. He sometimes didn’t use the language correctly, which caused some funny incidents.

I found the book humorous at times and learned a lot about what it takes to run an animal refuge. It is not a perfect book, sometimes he seemed to ramble on a bit, but overall I enjoyed learning about Ecuador and the amazing animal world we don’t always see this up close.

Honorable Mention and Guilty Pleasure

In the summer of 1979, two young women were awarded a generous university grant to learn about France.

They took this grant and used it to spend a summer mostly in swimsuits in the south of France near beaches and living in a tent at a campground. Here they learned to speak French but also so much more.

New challenges include having meaningful conservations with people at a nudist beach or how to transport a gallon of port on a moped.

Along the way, they learn how to navigate relationships with boys and make friends with the locals.

I liked how she shared intimate details about the people she met and her feelings about the boys she was interested in.

I felt I was really there following her life as she learned about herself and others.

It is a humorous tale based on their three-month study break the author took as part of a language degree course at Keele University in 1979.

Please feel free to share your favorite travelogues and memoirs in the comments — Todd Smith — thatawaydad.com