Books for Your Inner Wanderluster

EAT, PRAY, LOVE By: Elizabeth Gilbert

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want — a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world — all alone

UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN

Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—opens the door to a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. In sensuous and evocative language, she brings the reader along as she discovers the beauty and simplicity of life in Italy. An accomplished cook and food writer, Mayes also creates dozens of delicious seasonal recipes from her traditional kitchen and simple garden, all of which are included in this audio. Doing for Tuscany what M.F.K. Fisher and Peter Mayle did for Provence, Mayes writes about the tastes and pleasures of a foreign country with gusto and passion. A celebration of the extraordinary quality of life in Tuscany, Under the Tuscan Sun is a feast for all senses.

THE OLIVE FARM By: Carol Drinkwater

When the opportunity arises for Carol Drinkwater and her husband-to-be, Michel, to purchase ten acres of a disused olive farm in the South of France, the idea seems ridiculously far-fetched. After all, they are a young couple of limited means and have only been together a short time. But the splendor of the region becomes a force they are unable to resist. Michel presents their entire savings as a down payment for the farm, embarking the family on an adventure that will bring them in close contact with the charming countryside, querulous personalities, petty bureaucracies, and extraordinary wildlife (including a ravenous wild boar) of Provence.

SHARKS FIN AND SICHUAN PEPPER By: Fuchsia Dunlop

Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper is both an insightful, entertaining, scrupulously reported exploration of China’s foodways and a swashbuckling memoir studded with recipes (not converted, alas, from metric measurements) . But what makes it a distinguished contribution to the literature of gastronomy is its demonstration, through one person’s intense experience, that food is not a mere reflection of culture but a potent shaper of cultural identity.

A YEAR IN PROVENCE By: Peter Mayle

In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January’s frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.

IN ARABIAN NIGHTS By: Tahir Shah

In this entertaining jewel of a book, Tahir Shah sets off across Morocco on a bold new adventure worthy of the mythical Arabian Nights. As he wends his way through the labyrinthine medinas of Fez and Marrakech, traverses the Sahara sands, and samples the hospitality of ordinary Moroccans, Tahir collects a dazzling treasury of traditional wisdom stories, gleaned from the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights, which open the doors to layers of culture most visitors hardly realize exist. From master masons who labor only at night to Sufi wise men who write for soap operas, In Arabian Nights takes us on an unforgettable, offbeat, and utterly enchanted journey.

A House in Fez

When Suzanna Clarke and her husband bought a dilapidated house in the Moroccan town of Fez, their friends thought they were mad. Located in a maze of donkey-trod alleyways, the house – a traditional riad – was beautiful but in desperate need of repair. Walls were in danger of collapse, the plumbing non-existent. While neither Suzanna nor her husband spoke Arabic, and had only a smattering of French, they were determined to restore the building to its original splendour, using only traditional craftsmen and handmade materials. But they soon found that trying to do business in Fez was like being transported back several centuries in time and so began the remarkable experience that veered between frustration, hilarity and moments of pure exhilaration. But restoring the riad was only part of their immersion in the rich and colourful life of this ancient city."A House in Fez" is a journey into Moroccan culture, revealing its day-to-day rhythms, its customs and festivals; its history, Islam, and Sufi rituals; the lore of djinns and spirits; the vibrant life-filled market places and the irresistible Moroccan cuisine. And above all, into the lives of the people – warm, friendly, and hospitable. Beautifully descriptive and infused with an extraordinary sense of place, this is a compelling account of one couple's adventures in ancient Morocco.

A Hungry Woman in Paris

A journalist and activist, Canela believes passion is essential to life; but lately passion seems to be in short supply. It has disappeared from her relationship with her fiance, who is more interested in controlling her than encouraging her. It's absent from her work, where censorship and politics keep important stories from being published. And while her family is full of outspoken individuals, the only one Canela can truly call passionate is her cousin and best friend Luna, who just took her own life. Canela can't recover from Luna's death. She is haunted by her ghost and feels acute pain for the dreams that went unrealized. Canela breaks off her engagement and uses her now un-necessary honeymoon ticket, to escape to Paris. Impulsively, she sublets a small apartment and enrolls at Le Coq Rouge, Paris's most prestigious culinary institute. Cooking school is a sensual and spiritual reawakening that brings back Canela's hunger for life. With a series of new friends and lovers, she learns to once again savor the world around her. Finally able to cope with Luna's death, Canela returns home to her family, and to the kind of life she thought she had lost forever.

Under the Holy Lake: A Memoir of Easten Bhutan

A child's face, a forgotten scent, or a distinctive flavour engages memory and inspires longing. Ken Haigh brings us tantalisingly close to his own vision of longing for a place, a people, a time, as he revisits those all-too-fleeting years as a young school teacher in the remote Himalayan village of Khaling, Bhutan. These experiences in an exotic country will leave you yearning for ancient Buddhist temples, winding mountain trails, and a simpler way of life. This memoir will captivate the vicarious traveller in each of us.

La Bell Lingua

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman’s personal quest to speak fluent Italian.

For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with the “the world’s most loved and lovable language” together with explorations of Italy’s history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle and food in a true opera amorosa — a labor of her love of Italy.

Throughout her first excursion in Italy — with “non parlo Italiano” as her only Italian phrase — Dianne delighted in the beauty of what she saw but craved comprehension of what she heard. And so she chose to inhabit the language. Over more than twenty-five years she has studied Italian in every way possible through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and conversation groups, and, most importantly, large blocks of time in Italy. In the process she found that Italian became not just a passion and a pleasure, but a passport into Italy’s storia and its very soul. She offers charming insights into what it is that makes Italian the most emotionally expressive of languages, from how the “pronto” (“Ready!”) Italians say when they answer the telephone conveys a sense of something coming alive, to how even ordinary things such as a towel (asciugamano) or handkerchief (fazzoletto) sound better in Italian.

Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa

In an epic scooter trip from the South to the North of Italy, award-winning food writer Matthew Fort explores the local gastronomy, culinary culture and tumultuous history of a country. Taking as his starting point Melito Di Porto Salvo, the southernmost town on mainland Italy, Fort eats, drinks, and talks his way through Calabria, rich in spices and Arabian-influences, and on to Campania, where he falls in love with Naples, but despairs of its Pizza. He crosses the remote, mountainous landscape of Molise and adjoining Abruzzo, with their delicious cheeses and traditional lamb dishes. In Emilia-Romagna, he revels in La Salama da Sugo of Ferrara and Risotto alla Pilota of Mantua. He nips into Lombardy where he falls foul of heartless hoteliers and is refreshed at a trades union rally, finally passing through Piedmont where the cooking of France and Northern Europe fuses with that of Italy. As he travels on his scooter, Fort examines the country through its food and the people who produce it. He discovers a land where regional differences are still vibrantly alive, and uncovers the rich connection between history, tradition and cuisine. The enticing sum of these parts – the dishes, producers, ingredients, consumers and eating occasions – is nothing less than a contemporary portrait of the country.

Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure

After backpacking her way around India Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. When a beggar 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 eleven 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.

THE SHARPER YOUR KNIFE, THE LESS YOU CRY By: Kathleen Flinn

When the author, an American journalist and software executive working in London, is sacked from her high-powered job, she enrolls as a student at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris. With limited cooking skills and grasp of the French language, she gamely attempts to master the school’s challenging curriculum of traditional French cuisine. As if she didn’t have enough on her plate eviscerating fish and knocking out pâtéà choux, she determines to write a book about her experience and gets married along the way. The result is a readable if sentimental chronicle of that year in Paris in which her love life is explored in great detail, dirty weekends and all, and cooking features as a metaphor for self-discovery. Some readers may feel disappointed that the narrator’s encounters with French cookery remain largely confined to her lessons at the Cordon Bleu. On those rare occasions when she ventures into the food-obsessed city, the descriptions of meals are glancing at best. Although her struggles with the language and lack of knowledge about the culture lend comic elements to the story (once, trying to order a pizza over the phone, she said, “Je suis une pizza”-I am a pizza), they, too, constrain the author’s culinary explorations.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS By: Eric Weiner

The Barnes & Noble Review

As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Eric Weiner has spent much of his career traveling to some of the world’s least happy places — Iraq and Afghanistan among them. It bummed him out. Undertaking his first book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World, he decided it was time for a change of approach. “What if, I wondered, I spent a year traveling the globe, seeking out not the world’s well-trodden trouble spots but, rather, its unheralded happy places?” he writes. “Places that possess, in spades, one or more of the ingredients that we consider essential to the hearty stew of happiness: money, pleasure, spirituality, family, and chocolate, among others.” So he set about seeking a variety of Shangri-Las: testing tolerance and Moroccan hashish in the Netherlands; learning to accept loss and relinquish regret in Bhutan; contemplating the lavish wealth and lack of culture (and taxes) in Qatar; marveling at the darkness, drunkenness, and remarkable creativity in Iceland; eschewing introspection and embracing fun in Thailand; looking for contrast in miserable Moldova, “the world’s least happy country.” Along the way, Weiner gathers insights from many wise and well-traveled people, relates the latest findings in the field of happiness research, and turns enough pleasing phrases to keep even the surliest reader…happy.

I'M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF By: Bill Bryson

Sometimes we can feel like an observer in our own country, here’s a reverse wanderlust book! After two decades spent living in England, popular humorist Bill Bryson returned to the United States, his English wife and four children in tow. Much has changed here in the ol’ U.S. of A. since Bryson left, and in I’m A Stranger Here Myself, he recounts, in hilarious fashion, his struggles to successfully repatriate himself.

ALMOST FRENCH By: Sarah Turnbull

“Sarah Turnbull’s stint in Paris was only supposed to last a week. Chance had brought Sarah and Frederic together in Bucharest, and on impulse she decided to take him up on his offer to visit him in the world’s most romantic city. Sacrificing Vegemite for vichyssoise, the feisty journalist does her best to fit in, although her conversation, her laugh, and even her wardrobe advertise her foreigner status.” As she navigates the highs and lows of this strange new world, from life in a bustling quartier and surviving Parisian dinner parties to covering the haute couture fashion shows and discovering the hard way the paradoxes of French culture, little by little Sarah falls under its spell, maddening, mysterious, and charged with that French specialty – seduction.

COFFEE, TEA, OR ME?

Remember when flying was glamorous and sexy, even fun? When airline food was gourmet, everyone dressed up for a flight, and stewardesses catered to our every need-at least in our imaginations? This classic memoir by two audaciously outspoken young ladies, who lived and loved the free-spirited stewardess life, jets you back to those golden days of air travel-from the captain who’s as subtle as a 747 when he’s on the make to the passenger who mistakes the overhead luggage rack for an upper berth; from the names of celebrities who were a pleasure to serve (and some surprising notables on the “bad guy” list) to the origins of some naughty stereotypes-Spaniards are the best lovers, actors the most foul-mouthed. This huge bestseller, a First Class jet-age journal, offers a hilarious gold mine of outrageous anecdotes from the high-flying and amorous lives of those busty, lusty, adventuresome young women of the swinging ’60s known as “stews.”

THROUGH PAINTED DESERTS by Donald Miller

As a young man, Donald Miller and his friend Paul jumped into an old VW van and went on a road trip to find God and themselves. Along the way they scale the Grand Canyon, meet some hippies, listen to George Winston, and discover that there is more to life than what meets the eye.

Tales from the Expat Harem:Foreign Women in Modern Turkey

This internationally bestselling, critically-acclaimed collection invites you into the Turkey that thirty-two women from seven nations know, their experiences spanning the entire country and the last four decades in true tales of cultural conflict and discovery.

Humorous and poignant travelogue takes you to weddings and workplaces, down cobbled Byzantine streets, into boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road and deep into the feminine powerbases of steamy Ottoman hamam bathhouses. Subtext illuminates journeys of the soul.

Australian and Central American, North American and British, Dutch and Pakistani, our narrators demonstrate the evolutions Turkish culture has shepherded in their lives: assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood. From a Bryn Mawr archaeologist at Troy to the Christian missionary in Istanbul, clothing designers and scholars along the Aegean and the Mediterranean coastlines, the Peace Corps volunteer in Eastern Turkey to a journalist at the Iraqi border — and many others — our storytellers are ambitious women, pursuing business ownership and property.

Tango: An Argentine Love Story

Overwhelmed with the pain of a failed fifteen-year relationship, Camille Cusumano wanted badly to escape her life and heal her emotional wounds. She left for Buenos Aires, intending to stay a few short weeks, until her search for inner peace met with her true passion for tango. . Tango is a memoir of falling in love with a country through the dance that embodies intensity, freedom, and passionall pivotal to Camille's own process of self-discovery. From the charm of local barrios to savory empanadas, Camille wholeheartedly embraces Argentina's ardent culture, and a month-long escape turns into a personal odyssey. Slowly letting go of her anger through a blend of tango, Zen, and a burgeoning group of friends, Camille discovers that her fierceness and patience can exist in harmony as she learns how to survive in style when love falls apart.

Corfu Banquet: A Seasonal Memoir with Recipes

Celebrating the tastes, smells and colours of an island where the cooking is seasonal and the flowers play changes on the theme of year-round spring, this memoir is written in the rhythm of the five seasons of Corfu. It tells the stories of the house of Rovinia, built in the 1960s by Emma Tennant's parents, of Maria, the "spirit of the house" and her knowledge and wisdom, and entwines recipes and original photographs with fond recollections in prose.

A Late Dinner: Discovering the food in Spain

"An affectionate and informative account of Spain's food culture' Waitrose Food Illustrated 'This is, first of all, a really good book about Spain, and the atmosphere of beautiful and ingenious novelty which pervades its traditional life. It is also a serious and well-informed account of its food, which reflects a country's regional variety, its history and its addiction to pleasure' Colm Toibin 'If you have been waiting for an excuse to pack your bags, head off to Spain and discover some of the lesser-known and best kept culinary and cultural secrets, A Late Dinner could not paint a more accurate, balanced and tempting picture of Spain today' Eddie Hart, owner of restaurants Fino and Barrafina."

Yoga School Dropout

'Having become disillusioned with a successful career spent in advertising, the book’s author realizes that there must be more to life than shopping for handbags, endless deadlines and drinking copious amounts of Pinot Grigio. This leaves her other burgeoning love, yoga, to provide life’s answers and thus she resolves to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of yoga, India.

Edge is refreshingly honest about her high hopes and expectations of the trip. Whilst she hopes to find her yogic guru and “merge my Eternal Self with the big pool of cosmic bliss that is the universe”, she also acknowledges her desire to return home “the embodiment of feminine perfection…a magnetic babe”.'

Fly Solo: The 50 Best Places for Women Traveling Alone

There’s a whole big world out there. Here’s how every woman can get out and conquer it—solo. This is an inspiring guide for women who want to “fly solo” yet stay safe, sane, and solvent during their travels.