A book blog – or rather, an irregular series about books related to travel, adventure or the outdoors. Perhaps a better name would be Polar Bear Book Club but it’s too late for that. These books are perfect for between your travels and adventures or for cold winter evenings when you’re stuck at home. These are books about the world and about adventurers and explorers. Maybe your next adventure will be to follow in their footsteps?
Now, this is a book of two halves, because for the first few chapters, I was shaking my head and going “Yet again, I’m going to have to write on my blog that I read a travel-themed book that I didn’t particularly like”. But it got better. This month’s book is also the Rebel Readers’… More Travel Library: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
This has been on my to-read pile for a while and finally I decided it was going to come off that list and get read. The subtitle for it is “sea kayaking the Shipping Forecast” and now I’m helping at the boathouse, I’m taking more interest in sea kayaking, which is why this caught my… More Travel Library: Moderate Becoming Good Later by Toby and Katie Carr
A Chip Shop in Poznan by Ben Aitken has been sitting on my bookshelf for probably more years than I care to think about it. It’s always my “I’ll read that one next” before I find myself picking up something else. Turns out that was fate staying my hand because when I realised my Eras… More Travel Library: A Chip Shop in Poznan by Ben Aitken
This wasn’t my original plan for my July book but the one I’d planned to read sounded like even its own author hadn’t enjoyed it so off I went to the Kindle shop where I came across I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol. It’s the tale of a woman in her 40s… More Travel Library: I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol
Let’s give it its full title – this month’s Travel Library comes from The Rhine: Following Europe’s Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps by Ben Coates and let’s start by being brutally honest. This was a slog. The fact that I bought it in 2022 and never got beyond the first page until now should… More Travel Library: The Rhine by Ben Coates
Iceland has been my mania for a long time. Kayaking has been bubbling up but has been my newest mania for a little while, but particularly right now, as I attempt to enact a plot I actually have no control over whatsoever. Anyway, the moment I discovered that this book existed, via Lee-Anne Fox on… More Travel Library: Iceland by Kayak by Nigel Foster
This book holds a record for the longest time between reading it and getting onto my Travel Library! I bought it in Exeter back in September, on my way back from my weekend on Dartmoor, devoured the first chapter eagerly on the bus… and then it took until December to actually finish it and now… More Travel Library: Epic Continent by Nicholas Jubber
Well, it feels very late to be publishing this considering I started reading it at 7am on official release day on January 11th but there’s been so much Georgia stuff and I had other stuff to slot in but finally, it’s time for Alastair Humphreys’ Local. I read his Ask An Adventurer last year and… More Travel Library: Local by Alastair Humphreys
I know, it’s only been two weeks since the last Travel Library but a) I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Georgia posts that are starting on Thursday and b) I wanted a bit of breathing room between getting home and getting the first post out. Of course, today’s book isn’t technically about travel.… More Travel Library: Kvachi by Mikheil Javakhishvili
I read a lot of non-fiction in 2023, for someone who doesn’t really read non-fiction. The plan for this year is mostly to read more fiction from around the world – or at least from the Nordic region. But I read this in December and it fits the theme too well not to talk about… More Travel Library: Adventure Revolution by Belinda Kirk