West with the Night

This is one of our favorites--a classic women's travelogue about a female pilot flying over Africa in a small plane in the 1930's. Inspiring and beautifully written, this book provides insight into the lives of women in colonial East Africa, and into the life of one very unusual woman.

An Amateur's Guide to the Planet: Twelve Travel Journeys and Lessons for the Contemporary United States

There is no other travel book like this one. Combining travelogue, memoir and journalistic research, Jeannette Belliveau reflects on her decade of travel all over the world, posing thoughtful questions and offering important insights on culture, economics, and history: lessons she brings back home for us to ponder.

Turkish Reflections: A Biography of a Place

In 1972 Mary Lee Settle moved to Turkey because "it was warm, it was cheap, and I needed a refuge". She stayed three years, and when she left, she left behind some of her closest friends. In 1989 she returned for the first time, to soothe her sense of loss and to explore the trails blazed by Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Ghenghis Khan, and Ataturk. Along the way Settle turns off the main roads and wanders into villages where people live as they have for thousands of years; a land where cutting a tree is a crime, where goats are sacrificed to launch state-of-the-art ships and where stones from Greek and Roman temples are used to build Christian churches which have since been converted to mosques. This book is the warm and compassionate story of her travels, and well-worth reading.

People

Want your kiddies to grow up to be travellers? Read them this over-sized book before they go to bed. Beautifully illustrated, People teaches children about the differences that exist between the cultures and nations of the world. From the ways we eat, to the games we play and the clothes we wear, this wonderful book celebrates diversity and is guaranteed to stimulate many questions from your little ones. I fell in love with it the first time I read it. Now it has a special spot on my coffee table so that all my visitors (big and small) can enjoy it, too. (Evelyn Hannon)

Women's words on reading...

Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line that I didn't 'hear.' As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of anybody I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story...
(Source: Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings, 1984, The New Beacon Book of Quotations By Women, Editor, Rosalie Maggio)

Attention bookwormettes...

Each issue we'll be reviewing the latest and best travel literature available. We'll also be bringing back some of the golden oldies that we feel journeywomen everywhere will appreciate. And..we'd love your input. Guide books, biographies, short stories, how to, etc... Simply click here and let us know about your absolute favorites. C'mon. Let's Network!