Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Best "On the Road" Books

I love to take off on the road via a book. Here are some of the best road trips I have taken. If you have favorites, I'd love to hear about them.


Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon (Nonfiction)

William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Fiction)

The Pulitzer Prize­–winning classic of the American West that follows two aging Texas Rangers embarking on one last adventure. An epic of the frontier and rich with complex characters, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Fiction)

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.


The Roads to Sata: A 2,000 Mile Walk Through Japan by Alan Booth (Nonfiction)

One sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth travelled on foot from Soya, the country's northernmost tip, to Sata in the extreme south, traversing three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. His mission: 'to come to grips with the business of living here,' after having spent most of his adult life in Tokyo. The Roads to Sata is a wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek, vividly revealing the reality of life in off-the-tourist-track Japan

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Fiction)

Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.

Census by Jesse Ball (Fiction)

When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son. 

 


Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France by Kermit Lynch (Nonfiction)

“Wine is, above all, about pleasure. Those who make it ponderous make it dull . . . If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover.” So wrote the renowned wine expert Kermit Lynch in the introduction to Adventures on the Wine Route, his ultimate tour of France, especially its wine cellars. The “magic” of wine is Lynch’s subject as he takes the reader on a singular journey through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, northern and southern Rhone, and Burgundy. In Adventures on the Wine Route, the wine lover will find wisdom without a trace of pretension and hype.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Fiction)

It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien.

After that, things get much, much worse.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Fiction)

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig (Nonfiction-ish)

A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions on how to live.



Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.    

27 comments:

  1. Ooh nice picks! Pretty much new to me ones. I don't think I had them in required reading either but I am familiar with one or two of them in essence. Lol.


    Here's my Tuesday Post

    Have a GREAT day!

    Old Follower :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. LONESOME DOVE is a great pick! I haven't read any of these others.

    Happy TTT!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deb, you definitely have some 'classic' road trips here. Ah, The Hobbit - loved that book. You know, I've never read Lonesome Dove. I ought to, but we'll see.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Grapes of Wrath is a great pick. I really liked that book, especially the ending.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ooh, I like the idea of the Sata book. Japan's bounceback from WW2 was incredible.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've always been intrigued by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I shall have to properly try it one day :) Great variety in your list!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I enjoyed The Hobbit. Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy was an ok read for me. I loved the film!

    Have a great week!

    Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
    My post:
    https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/top-ten-tuesday-books-that-feature-travel/

    ReplyDelete
  8. The Grapes of Wrath is one of my favorites! I would add Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Stayed to the list.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I loved The Hobbit, but The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is my all-time favorite book!


    Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  10. You win. You found absolutely classic travel novels. I didn't think that far from my current reading list. Bravo.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love Lonesome Dove. Such a classic.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Excellent choices for on-the-road books. I read Lonesome Dove forever ago and really want to reread it again, maybe this year. Love The Grapes of Wrath--definitely a classic, tough to read in spots, but so well worth it.

    I wasn't able to finish the entire Lord of the Rings, but I loved The Hobbit and have read it a few times, but probably not for 40 years!

    Hitchhiker's Guide is an inspired choice :)

    I actually read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--in high school, one of my brothers insisted I read it, so I did because I trusted his advice. But, I was way to young to appreciate it. I finished it but was bored out of my mind!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most people that I tell about ZAMM never get through it. There are parts that are very dense, I think.

      Delete
  13. One of our favorites to listen to is The Phantom Tollbooth, we will be listening to Flabbergasted by Ray Blackston this weekend, for the third time...safe to say it's another favorite.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Lots of good choices on here! Loved that you included The Hobbit!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I've read most of these and enjoyed each one that I've read, but my favorite (possibly my all-time favorite book) is "The Hobbit."

    ReplyDelete
  16. It makes me happy to see The Hobbit on your list. :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Census was available at my library and is now on hold for me! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Great list. I have read a few on your list. Love traveling through books.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Of your list, Census and Grapes of Wrath have walked along with me. I like Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, a lot. Much more than the poor film adaptation.

    ReplyDelete
  20. It's funny, I've been thinking about doing a Road Trip blog post but I had none of your books on it, despite having read several of them. How could I have forgotten The Hobbit? I think the most recent book I've read that fits this genre is The Lincoln Highway.

    Constance

    ReplyDelete
  21. Love your picks, though I have only read a couple on this list ...

    ReplyDelete
  22. I've not read any of these, but I do love travel books.

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear your thoughts.