Books to help smooth your trip
We present a curated list of travel books to help plan, prep and pass the time. This week, we’re going on a gap year, getting to know geniuses, filling in the spaces and travelling alone. Guide: Gap-year how-to The Big Trip: Your Ultimate Guide to Gap Years and Overseas Adventures Post-school adventures abroad By: Lonely Planet List price: $30.99 Available at: amazon.ca A great purchase for a young person with itchy feet who keeps getting asked, “So, what are you going to do after graduation?”
The experts at Lonely Planet lay out what it takes to travel around the world safely and effectively when dreams are big but funds (and experience) are low. Seek: The world’s most creative places The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places, from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley Connecting places with ideas By: Eric Weiner List price: $35.95 Available at: amazon.ca From Vienna to Kolkata, discover what genius really means in seven hotbeds of learning.
The author, a longtime foreign correspondent for NPR, takes his version of the 18th-century “Grand Tour” in search of the cultural cues and geographical laboratories that produced some of the world’s greatest thinkers and artists. Colour: Paint the world Coloring Crush Kids’ travel activity book By: Klutz List price: $21.99 Available at: Chapters Indigo The perfect airplane companion for a creative kid who isn’t afraid to col- our inside (and outside) the lines, Coloring Crush has more than 60 art-quality pages stuffed full of delightful holiday-themed designs.
The book also comes with a set of double-tipped pencils and perforated postcard pages, which can be removed and mailed to friends. Feel: Connect with female travellers This Place A Stranger: Canadian Women Travelling Alone Essays by Canadian women By: Vici Johnstone List price: $24.95 Available at: Chapters Indigo Explores the thrills and threats of a Canadian woman travelling alone.
From handling drunken Oktoberfest revellers while hiking the Austrian Alps to following ancestral First Nation steps while road tripping around the Great Lakes, each firstperson account reveals as much about the person as it does the place. Emma Yardley (eyardley@gmail.com) is a Toronto/Vancouver writer.