So the Once Upon a Time challenge is ending this week, and I was feeling a little sad (in spite of my determination to read Neil Gaiman’s Stardust before then, assuming I get through two other books as well… what am I doing hanging around the blogosphere?), and then I discovered (through the ever-connected Iliana) that over at A Life in Books there’s an armchair travel challenge. What? An excuse to read travel books? Hooray!

So, I’m joining in. I’ve got to read six travel books between July 1 and December 31, which shouldn’t be too hard…

I tried to spread out my choices, so that I get something from different parts of the world. I also tried to throw in a little fiction, too, just for fun.

So, I chose:

1. A Good Year, by Peter Meyer. Yeah, it’s a Russell Crowe movie, but I haven’t seen it yet, and there’s always something romantic about Provence. If I decide against this one, I’ll substitute A Year in Provence. Or maybe I’ll read them both.

2. Pomegranate Soup, by Marsha Mehran. A fiction work about Iranian refugees in Ballinacroagh, Ireland. Sounds fascinating.

3. Japanland, by Karin Muller. The adventures of an American woman spending a year in Japan trying to find the elusive “Wa” (focus, harmony, spiritual peace). Could be fun. [I gave up on finding this one; I read An Embarrassment of Mangoes, instead.]

That was all the travel books I had on my TBR list, so I had to do a bit of digging. These are the ones I found that sounded interesting.

4. From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East, William Dalyrmple. Another one that sounded intriguing. From Amazon: “As a writer and as a traveler, Dalrymple treads the now-faint trail marked out by sixth-century monk John Moschos, who wandered the world of Eastern Byzantium, visiting the scattered Christian monasteries and hermitages and recording the rituals he saw and the preaching he heard in a book called The Spiritual Meadow. Unlike its predecessor, Dalrymple’s account of his journey through the same regions leads, not to meditations upon the eternal God, but, rather, to insights into a dying culture. “[ I bailed on this one, too, reading The Royal Road to Romance instead.]

5. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on The Great Beach of Cape Cod, Henry Beston . I saw this in our local indie store a while back, and it never made it on to my TBR list. Yay for challenges!

6. Eight Feet in the Andes: Travels with a Mule in Unknown Peru, Dervla Murphy. A woman, her 9-year-old daughter and a mule in Peru. From Amazon: “The story is a wonderful blend of feminism, anthropology and adventure. The set should appeal to many, both lovers of fiction and nonfiction.”