I love the Download Stage of packing. All the underwear, bikinis, eyeshadow, immodium, headphones, health forms, flip-flops, and favorite jeans have been folded, rolled, zipped up and secured in a suitcase.

Now, I’m left to decide what I will watch and read on this next adventure.

The trip combines work and travel. It combines time with friends and connecting with my somewhat-long-lost lover. (He’s been gone since July!). And, it spans destinations I know quite well, as well as several I’ve never seen.

Morocco. It will be my first time there, but I get the slight feeling that it won’t be my last. I get the feeling that I’m going to fall in love with dusty laneways, dark medinas and a spitting camel or two.

I scoured the internet, just as I always do before a trip, to find that perfect novel; a book to put me in the place and in the mood. Something soulfully written to make me eager to explore and to lend a deeper understanding of a culture.

The internet returned a suggestion of Tangerine––a novel about two college friends who reunite in Tangier, but things go amiss. Not sure what those things are yet, as I’m 20 pages in. However, I’m loving it thus far.

“Tangier and I were not suited for one another. We never would be, no matter how many chances I gave it. From the little I knew of it already, I had realized what a hard place it could be. It was not a place where one simply arrived and belonged. It was a place that inspired rebellion.”

– Tangerine, by Christine Mangan

In that spirit, here are the books I’ve taken traveling, some on Kindle and some in good-old-fashioned paperback. RIP, Stephen King’s IT, which broke in half somewhere just outside of Hanoi, Vietnam. RIP, all the pages that blew overboard, to disintegrate forever at the bottom of Halong Bay.

These books I’m listing are no mere beach reads, but books that impressed me––as a writer––and a few that changed me––as a human.

This list also includes my all-time favorite book, with a quote that’s gotten me out of the bed on random, frustrating days.

“All depression is rooted in self pity, and, all self pity is rooted in taking oneself too seriously.”

– tom Robbins, Fierce invalids home from hot climates –

If you’re headed out on an adventure soon, grab one of these for the journey.

Each is equally fantastic curled in your own bed, on a weekend with nothing to do.

I’ve linked them to fitting travel locations. Hilariously, I will also attempt to sum up each plot in less than 3 sentences. Ready? Here we go!

Traveling … The American West

THE STAND: After a virus wipes out nearly everyone on Earth and things have completely broken down, a man and his new friends set out to cross the country, pushed by an unknown force and a looming battle of Good vs. Evil, including the scariest character to ever be written, the pure evil of Randall Flagg.

GOD’S MIDDLE FINGER: Richard Grant’s girlfriend has dumped him and while some travel writers (ahem: Me) might curl into a ball and weep, he instead takes off on a real-life, near-suicide mission to travel solo across the drug cartel-held landscapes of the Sierra Madre mountains in Northern Mexico.

LONESOME DOVE: Avenging a good woman, steering herds through flash floods, barroom brawls and an epic love story of two best friends––two fearless, hard-driving cowboys––and the adventures of a rugged lifetime.

Traveling … Southeast Asia

THE LOTUS EATERS: The very first pages of this heartbreakingly beautiful book drop you into the life of a female, American war photographer, standing at the fall of Saigon, watching the last helicopter leave without her. What ensues is chaos, but also hundreds of pages of detailed, stunning, achingly poetic descriptions, which capture like no other the beauty of Vietnam and of Cambodia.

IT: IT is a horror novel, yes, but it’s really a coming of age story about a group of childhood friends who face down their own deepest fears, which are … ya know … embodied in a terrifying, razor-toothed clown who lives in the sewer. Read it in Vietnam simply because I read it in Vietnam … and oh my god this book.

FIERCE INVALIDS HOME FROM HOT CLIMATES: The only book I’ve ever read four times centers around Switters, a swashbuckling CIA agent, who gets first cursed by a Peruvian shaman, losing the use of his legs, before falling in love with an age-inappropriate young lady and going on a rampaging adventure that spans four continents.

Traveling … to Europe

THE WITCHING HOUR: Most of the book is set in New Orleans (European enough), but the story actually goes back to 17th-century Scotland (Europe IRL!), where the original Mayfair witch conjures an evil spirit called Lasher. Lasher torments her descendants for generations, into modern times.

CAPTAIN CORELLI’S MANDOLIN: I read this traveling in Greece and screamed, laughed, gasped and wept in swimming pools all over Sifnos, Milos and Athens. It’s a love story, between a wild, humorous army captain and a fiery Greek woman, Pelagia, as they navigate an impossible romance in a time of war. But this book will also give you an insider’s guide to World War II, to these islands, the suffering of conflict, and the customs and cultures that date back centuries. Rated: 500 Stars. Would read again!

NAME OF THE WIND: The first book in a three-book series is set in a fantasy land that mimics Medieval Europe, and, this is honestly one of the best novels I’ve ever read in the fantasy category. It blows Game of Thrones out of the water. We meet a frustrated barman in the first few chapters, but then we learn, he’s hiding an aptitude for alchemy and his true purpose, to essentially save the world from terrible things that stalk the night.

Traveling … Oh, Just Anywhere

BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES: Tom Wolfe kills me with words, with plot, with character development and with the ability to totally suck you into a story that combines heroes and villains, who then swap places in your mind, because real, true people so often do. You get so swept up in this story that starts with an affair, a car wreck in a bad neighborhood and a wealthy man on trial for murder, but it’s so much more; a book that delves into our faults as humans and our desire for redemption,

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES: Way to scare the living fuck out of me, Bradbury, with your creepy carnival come to town, and your literary creation of unspeakable evil that stalks adolescents. Why don’t the adults ever believe them?! Terrifying.

SHANTARAM: People hate this book, but many, me included, truly love it and count it as a weird, Adventurer Bible of sorts, bonding travelers far and wide. Find a group of travelers at a table over beers, mention this book and prepare for the arguments to begin. It begins with the somewhat-true story of the author, who breaks out of an Australian prison, flees to the worst neighborhood of Mumbai and disappears into a world unknown. This book shoves you into the slums of India, giving you way too much love story, multiple chapters of intense friendship, a drug cartel, rabid dogs, terrorist plots, and just the most gorgeous prose ever written. I wept, not in a Greek swimming pool this time, but on many, many flights and many, many bartstools. It’s slow in parts, more than 900 pages and is an investment to read. My copy is marked with a thousand underlined passages and is something I would grab first, were the house on fire.

My flight is literally about to board. Right now! Excuse any typos I missed.

I’m headed to Istanbul and on to Rome. They are closing the boarding door, so I’ll sign off with this …

“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.”

– Shantaram –