Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books that Made Me Want to Travel the World

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week there is a new topic for bloggers to choose and list their top ten. This week’s theme is Top Ten Things Books Have Made Me Want to Do or Learn About After Reading Them.

I decided to do my own take on this week’s theme and instead I picked; Top Ten Books that Made Me Want to Travel the World.

If you don’t know by now then, other than reading, travel is one of the main loves of my life. I want to see the world and I don’t think I’m ever going to be content in one place. The past few Top Ten Tuesday themes have been filled with travel and books. First there was top ten travel facts about me, then my top ten books that were set outside the US, and now top ten books that made me want to travel. There were more than a few, and this list is a mixture of books that have inspired holidays I’ve been on and books that have made me want to hop on a plane and fly far away.

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Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Prague

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series was the first I read that inspired my travel plans. After finishing the first book I was desperate to visit Prague, to experience the wonder and magic with my own two eyes that was so richly described.

“The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies.”

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Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor
Scottish Highlands

When I first read Into the Dim I had already booked a trip up to Scotland, as well as a day tour of the Scottish Highlands, and reading this book only made me more and more excited to experience the wild beauty of the country for myself.

“A fragrant breeze blew past, ruffling my clothes as I stared, astounded by the brutal beauty of the land around me. Beyond the yard, the valley spread out like a rumpled green and purple quilt, with the vast moor just beyond.”

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The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
India

For some reason after finishing The Star-Touched Queen India didn’t get bumped up my must-visit list, mainly because the main setting of this book was Akaran and I couldn’t visit there. Then I saw a post Lila did on mythical India and the pictures there was so gorgeous all I could think was, ‘forget work, forget any obligations you have, jump on a plane and go to India right this second’.

“Stories of elephants who spun clouds, shaking tremors loose from ancient trunks gnarled with the rime of lost cyclones, whirlwinds and thunderstorms. Myths of frank-eyed naga women, twisting serpentine, flashing smiles full of uncut gemstones. Legends of a world beneath, above, beside the one I knew―where trees bore edible gems and no one would think twice about a girl with dark skin and a darker horoscope.”

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Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
Barcelona

The way Stephanie Perkins wrote this book allowed me to see the city of Barcelona through Isla and Josh’s eyes, like I was a tourist right alongside them. But it wasn’t enough. All it did was make me more determined to see the city through my own eyes rather than through the pages of a book.

“Red-and-yellow-striped flags – some with the blue triangle and star of independence, some without – hang everywhere from apartment balconies, soaked with storm. The city’s appearance is distinctly Western European, but it’s also filled with colourful architecture and steep hills.”

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Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Greece

Ever since before I can remember Greece has been a country I’ve longed to go to and reading the Percy Jackson series, reading about the myths and Gods, just made me more eager to visit the country than I was before.

“Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron god for the city of Athens. Your dad created some stupid saltwater spring for his gift. My mom created the olive tree. The people saw that her gift was better, so they named the city after her.”
“They must really like olives.”

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The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
Honolulu

Granted I can’t see Honolulu in the 1800’s like Nix did in The Girl From Everywhere, but I’ll settle for seeing it in the present day. Besides who wouldn’t want to visit Hawaii one day.

“This was old Honolulu, before tourism began in earnest, before skyscrapers and seaside hotels. There would still be locals speaking the native tongue, telling native stories; their culture was fading but not yet gone.”

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Passenger by Alexandra Bracken
Angkor

We didn’t see much of Angkor in this book but when little we did see enchanted me. Like with Honolulu in The Girl From Everywhere I can’t see Angkor like Etta did in Passenger, before Western civilisation took over, but if I ever do visit there myself I can imagine what it would have been like back then.

“Etta knew that both cities – Angkor Wat, and their present location, Angkor Thom – had, in her time, been largely cleared of the jungle’s ever-reaching overgrowth to allow for tourists to explore the spread of temples and structures. But whatever year or era they were in, it was clear it was after it had been abandoned by the Khmer Empire but before it had come to the attention of Western civilization.”

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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Saint-Malo

Although reading this book we saw the city in the height of the war it still sounded like an amazing place; full of history and adventure. I’d love to see it as it is now and see how it survived the aftermath of the war that was described within the pages of All the Light We Cannot See.

“Saint-Malo: Water surrounds the city on four sides. Its link to the rest of France is tenuous: a causeway, a bridge, a spit of sand. We are Malouins first, say the people of Saint-Malo. Bretons next. French if there’s anything left over.”

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World After by Susan Ee
San Francisco

I’ve already been to San Francisco once, so I can say with confidence it is definitely one of my favourite American cities. Reading this book only made me want to visit again, experience everything I did before and see it at its height rather than in the wake of an apocalypse like Penryn did.

“San Francisco should be a city bustling with sparkling lights, motion, and noise. I used to look forward to and dread coming here at the same time because of all the sensory overload. I almost always got lost wandering around the windy streets the few times I visited with friends or my dad.
Now, it’s a wasteland.”

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A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray
Russia

Russia is another place that’s on my must-visit list and every book I read that’s set there – A Thousand Pieces of You, The Crown’s Game, even The Grisha series set in a country influenced and inspired by Russia – only makes me more determined to one day walk the streets myself.

“Many Russians keep dachas, small cabins in the countryside where they go in summertime to grow vegetables and swim in the lakes; these houses remain vacant throughout the winter, isolated as they are.”

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So what do you think? Did you take part in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, if so let me know what things books have inspired you to do or learn about.