Why reading travel novels makes that journey so much sweeter....

So you have your itinerary planned and your tickets booked, and you just can't wait to set out on that adventure of a lifetime. This is what you have been waiting for! Maybe it's a whirlwind trip through Europe, a long meander through South America, or just a short city break in Paris. Whatever journey you are about to go on, there's one thing you can do to really enhance the experience, and that's to pick up a couple of travel novels.

That's right - read a book!

I'm not just suggesting a guide book, though they of course have their place. I mean read novels, memoires, travelogues - anything that is set in the place you are going to.

But I'm going to Paris myself...I hear you say... why do I want to read a book about it? Surely seeing the place myself is much more valuable?

But of course! Nothing replaces sitting outside a cafe in an unfamiliar city and soaking up the atmosphere or trying new foods in a busy Asian marketplace - but reading books set in those places will truly bring them to life for you once you get there. Novels are filled with characters who have walked the streets you are now setting foot in for the first time. They have stood outside the buildings you are gazing at in awe - or perhaps even lived in them! They might even have drunk at the bar that you are now standing at, with your glass of white wine and a map of the city in your hand.

Travel novels can mean different things to different people. For some it is a novel about the journey itself - a jungle adventure like Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast, or an epic sea voyage as portrayed in the English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. But for us, a travel novel is any work of fiction that transports you to a different place, that gives you a sample of its stories and history, that describes the city or landscape in a way that makes you feel like you have been there yourself.

And at Packabook we do all the hard work for you - finding the novels that do that.

Just look at that list of enticing countries on the left! Click on any one of them and you will find books that tell the stories of people who have lived, loved, fought and died in those places. Reading them, we witness the hopes and dreams of the people who live there - we see their homes ripped away from them by politics or war, we discover their favorite hideaways, meet their families, are taken to the places where they rendezvous with their secret lovers. By the time we have read these novels and experienced all that the characters have been through, we feel we have lived, at least for a time, in their shoes.

And the next time you go to a place where they have been, you will feel like you have come home.

That is the magic of travel novels.

Whether you are traveling sometime soon or not, why not take a peek into another world and start your world adventure right here at Packabook. Pick a country to the left and start exploring the wonderful stories on offer....and allow yourself to be transported to a country far, far away.....

Happy reading!

Packabook

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