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Travel Books: More than two dozen contributors and friends of World Hum recall their favorite travel reads of 2011

12.20.11 | 11:24 AM ET

Photo by Jim Benning

We asked more than two dozen contributors and friends of World Hum to tell us what travel-related books they read this year and whether they had a favorite. There were no ground rules. The books could be fiction, non-fiction, even poetry, and published in any year. Here’s what they told us.

Mike Barish
Two of my favorites that I read in 2011 are Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz and the modern classic Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl. The Pacific has always intrigued me. The epic voyages of some of the world’s greatest explorers, in particular Captain Cook, might just pale in comparison to the journeys undertaken by some of the earliest settlers of the Pacific islands. The two books reminded me that we are capable of great things, and that for every awe-inspiring story that survives the passage of time, the names and accomplishments of so many are lost to history.

Mike Barish is a freelance writer, host and regular contributor to Gadling. He’s also (unofficially) the world’s foremost authority on the SkyMall catalog.

Jim Benning
I really enjoyed re-reading The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, by Dean MacCannell, a classic sociological look at modern travel. It was written decades ago but almost could have been written yesterday. MacCannell examines the modern traveler as an anthropologist might observe an Amazonian tribesman, revealing just how bizarre so many modern travel customs are. I read Paul Theroux’s The Tao of Travel, which deserves a place on any traveler’s bookshelf. And I finally got around to reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It’s such a classic travel tale. I’m embarrassed it took me so long to get around to it. It should be required reading for travel writers.

Jim Benning is the cofounder and coeditor of World Hum.

Frank Bures
I got to do quite a bit of traveling this year, so a lot of my reading revolved around that. When I went to Guyana, I reread Shiva Naipaul’s book about the Jonestown massacre, Journey to Nowhere, which still shines more than 30 years after it was written. While I was in Guyana, though, there was much giddy talk about John Gimlette’s new book, Wild Coast, which has since come out, and looks excellent. I was in East Africa for about six weeks, and as it happened, I ran out of things to read (even though I brought about 20 books—I know, but it was research) so I picked up a copy of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, which was an excellent read full of black humor about Indian cast relations, and kind of a murder mystery too.

Closer to home, I reread Michael Perry’s classic, Population 485, which is so good it makes me ache with envy. Likewise John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, which has some of the best essays I’ve read in recent years. But I think my favorite book of the year was Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones, which had been hovering mid-pile for a long time. I’ve read his other books, and his magazine work, but “Oracle Bones” just made me feel humble as a writer, seeing how easily he wove together his stories and research and ideas and into such a heartfelt and profound piece of work. Oddly, I read it before Hessler was awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, but couldn’t help coming to the same conclusion.

Frank Bures is a contributing editor to World Hum. His World Hum story, The Roads Between Us, was a “notable” pick in the Best American Travel Writing 2011.

Sophia Dembling
Among other books, I read Just Kids, by Patti Smith. When I am homesick for New York City, as I often am, it’s not the gleaming city of today, but the grimy, dangerous, pungent, and fertile city of the 1970s. We all miss it, those of us who came of age at that time. Even friends who still live in the city are homesick for it. New York City was hardscrabble but earnest, as was the life Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe lived among the artists and iconoclasts there at the birth of the punk scene. They are a few years older than I and we didn’t run in the same circles, but their haunts were my haunts and the city they describe is familiar and dear. Smith’s story is Zelig-like, with all manner of celebrity artists passing through. But what I took away most from the book were memories of that time and place, and a longing to revive the fervor of my own creative youth.

Dallas-based writer Sophia Dembling’s book “The Introvert’s Way” will be published by Perigee Books in fall 2012.

Elisabeth Eaves
While walking around old New Orleans ogling the Spanish colonial architecture, I was seized by a desire to know the history of the city. I found Ned Sublette’s The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square in a local bookstore. It’s comprehensive and totally absorbing, encompassing Europe’s 16th-century religious wars; the colonization of the Caribbean; the rise and fall of the sugar economy; and the history of slavery in America.

Also, I read All Over the Map, by Laura Fraser. It’s a memoir about traveling, being a freelance writer, looking for love, and reflecting on whether all those life choices were such hot ideas or not.

Finally, I read The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox, by Nina Burleigh. Burleigh tells the true story of a young American woman who went to study in Italy, and after her housemate was murdered, found herself in the grips of a legal culture clash that put her in jail for four years. Burleigh, who moved to Perugia to follow every twist and turn of Knox’s trial, captures the spooky and superstitious underbelly of the hilltop city.

Elisabeth Eaves is the author of Wanderlust: A love Affair with Five Continents, which has been called a “heady, headlong chronicle of a decade and a half spent adrift” (The New York Times), “fabulously addictive” (The Awl), and “a vodka martini served straight up with a twist” (Forbes). Elisabeth is also the author of “Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping,” and lives in New York City.

David Farley
In preparation for a trip to Ethiopia, I read Camilla Gibb’s novel Sweetness in the Belly, about a young English girl who is raised in a Sufi shrine in Morocco and comes of age in Harar, a walled town in eastern Ethiopia. Eventually she settles in London. The book is lush in its vivid imagery and impressively evokes a sense of place through characterization and culture and history.

David Farley is the author of An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town and co-editor of Travelers’ Tales Prague and the Czech Republic: True Stories. He’s a contributing editor of Afar magazine.

Haley Sweetland Edwards
I’ve read quite a few wonderful travel-related books this year, so it’s hard to narrow down a favorite. A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, was wonderful—a lovely, grimy must-read for all lovers of travel narratives. I also read Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, by Tom Bissell, about the Aral Sea’s creeping decline and, more broadly, about modern Uzbekistan. And then there was Wendell Steavenson’s charming collection, Stories I Stole, which gives a fantastic glimpse into pre-Rose Revolution Georgia. 

But if you’re going to make me decide on a favorite, I’d have to go with Annie Dillard’s collection of loosely-related musings, travel essays and philosophical rants, For the Time Being. It’s first-person narrative of her journey through her own personal philosophy—but if that sounds harrowing, don’t be intimidated. It reads like an old friend’s diary, part travelogue about her time visiting places like China and Israel, or maternity wards in the U.S., and part an intellectual exploration of a vast array of literature, including the Old Testament and the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I fell into it accidentally one Saturday morning and clambered out the other side two days later, gasping, depressed, exhilarated and refreshed.

Haley Sweetland Edwards is a writer based in Sana’a, Yemen and Tbilisi, Georgia. Her journalism appears in the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic.

Chris Epting
I found myself returning to old favorites. In the Arctic, in Montana, in the Mojave Desert and beyond—safely snug in my bag were my well-worn copies of Blue Highways and Charles Kuralt’s America. But I also enjoyed in various places, at my son’s suggestions, Travels by Michael Crichton.

Chris Epting is the author/photographer of 18 books, including “James Dean Died Here,” “Roadside Baseball,” Led Zeppelin Crashed Here” and “Hello It’s Me: Dispatches from a Pop Culture Junkie.”

Peter Ferry
We went to Australia this year, so I reread Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country and enjoyed it very much again although a little like cotton candy; after a while it made my teeth ache. Not so Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore, which purports to be a history of colonial Australia but turns out to be a history of the human heart and spirit. It tells how the English shipped their scum and dregs off to the other side of the world hoping to be done with them only to have them build this quite remarkable country and culture. A wonderful story. I also read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which paints a picture of what Newt Gingrich wants us to think the world will look like if we don’t elect him president, and reread Moby Dick, the mother of all American travel books; what wayfarer can’t identify with Ishmael saying that when he feels like “stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Peter Ferry is the author of the novel Travel Writing.

Don George
Very happily, writing the monthly Trip Lit column for National Geographic Traveler forces me to read a lot of new travel-related fiction and non-fiction. So the list of all the books I read this year stretches toward 100. My three Honorable Mentions would go to: Maya Roads, Mary Jo McConahay’s impassioned account of adventures in the Maya tropical forest; Radio Shangri-La, Lisa Napoli’s open-hearted memoir of moving to Bhutan in 2007 to help start a youth-oriented radio station; and Man Seeks God, Eric Weiner’s provocative—and often hilarious—quest to understand the planet’s most pervasive (and in some cases, just intriguingly idiosyncratic) belief systems.

My top three books would be: #3, Wanderlust, by Elisabeth Eaves, an intensely lived and beautifully rendered autobiographical celebration of the world’s life-changing possibilities; #2, Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Mark Adams’s learned, evocative, rollicking historical-homage-cum-adventure-saga that traces Hiram Bingham’s storied journey; and #1, To a Mountain in Tibet, Colin Thubron’s eloquent, empathetic, encyclopedic and poignant tale of a personal pilgrimage to sacred Mount Kailas, an amazing book by one of our greatest travel writers.

Don George has been travel editor at the San Francisco Examiner Chronicle, founded and edited the Wanderlust section of Salon.com, and most recently was Global Travel Editor at Lonely Planet Publications.

Mary Gordon
This year I read several books by Croatian authors, including A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism by Slavenka Drakuli? and Café Europa, her book of essays on life after communism. Both were hilarious and insightful.

Early this year, while on a train in Portugal, I read The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot—a hybrid of memoir and true crime. It’s gritty, violent, and provocative—not exactly a happy-go-lucky travel narrative! I have a fascination with Geoff Dyer and just recently re-read Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. I am riveted by its sense of place and dual narrative. One of my all time favorite travel related books is Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson. It’s a madcap spoof of the ubiquitous Italian travel-cooking memoir set in Tuscany and complete with insane recipes that will make you shoot Chianti out your nose. Spot on and laugh-out-loud funny.

Marcy Gordon is the editor for Travelers’ Tales new humor writing collection Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana, due out Spring 2012. She writes about travel, food and wine for a variety of media and on her blog Come for the Wine. Visit www.comeforthewine.com for more information.

Spud Hilton
Not sure if it counts, but the 2011 and 2012 catalogs for Geographic Expeditions made the list this year. For a tour company, GeoEx produces some surprisingly good writing in the descriptions of places and summaries of tours. Other than that, I churned through my never ending pile of Eric Newby, Tim Cahill, Bill Bryson and Travelers’ Tales anthologies that sit next to my bed. Not specific, I know, but inspirational when ideas aren’t coming easily.

Spud Hilton is the travel editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Eva Holland
I managed to read a lot of travel books in 2011. (This was an unexpected accomplishment: Most years, I’m more likely to buy a heap of them, put them on the shelf and stare at them, but never actually sit down and read them.) I read classics like Jonathan Raban’s Hunting Mister Heartbreak, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey and William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways, and I read a few new releases too—Wanderlust, by Elisabeth Eaves, and Rachel Friedman’s The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost. I also dug into essay collections from Granta, Men’s Journal, Outside and National Geographic Adventure.

But my favorite of the bunch was Passage to Juneau, Jonathan Raban’s account of sailing solo from Seattle to Alaska via the Inside Passage. I’m a Raban fan in general, and I think he’s at his best whenever he writes about being on the water, but “Passage” took his usual mixture of eloquent description, historical context and thoughtful reflection, and added a deeply personal element that, for me, made it the most memorable book I read all year.

Eva Holland is the senior editor of World Hum.

Joanna Kakissis
My friend Miranda Kennedy wrote an evocative and very witty book, Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India, about her years living in the subcontinent. Her book did what all great travel books do: It helped me understand a great culture, and its place in a fast-changing world, through an engrossing narrative that combined history, great characters and a clear love of place.

Joanna Kakissis reports for NPR and TIME Magazine out of her base in Athens.

Abbie Kozolchyk
You’d think the subject of Tony Perrottet’s The Sinner’s Grand Tour, A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe is what makes the book hard to put down. But in fact, the writing is so consistently, ridiculously vivid that his least sexy encounters—my favorite involves a cranky, backwoods restaurant hostess with “the pageboy haircut of a warrior monk”—are as absorbing as any with Sade, Casanova or porn-loving popes.

Abbie Kozolchyk is a New York-based writer who contributes to National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Allure and other publications.

Ben Keene
I spent a good chunk of 2011 in Asia, and found myself gravitating towards books on this beguiling, bewildering continent. Starting off with Peter Hessler’s stunning Oracle Bones, I next read The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen and The Quiet American by Graham Greene. All three authors impressed me with their observations—about China, Nepal, and Vietnam respectively—by writing thoughtful passages that often revealed something larger about the subjects. The character development in each also reminded me that great travel literature is also filled with fascinating people, not just strange things and foreign places. And finally, shortly after returning to the US, I raced through Christian DeBenedetti’s lively compendium of beer destinations, The Great American Ale Trail. If I owned a car, it would be the kind of book I’d toss in the backseat alongside my road atlas.

Ben Keene is the author of Best Hikes Near New York City. His work has appeared in DRAFT, Wend, the Village Voice, Beer Connoisseur, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He blogs about beer and travel at Where and Back.

Maya Kroth
I spent most of the year making excuses to my highly cultured fancy-pants friends for why I devoted so much time to devouring the Game of Thrones books (yep, all five). I’ve never been much for Renaissance Faires, fantasy novels or knights in chain mail sword-fighting on horseback, but what got me about these books was the sense of place. In his made-up universe, George R. R. Martin luxuriates in creating dozens of distinct, richly detailed settings loosely modeled on real-life places and cultures, from the familiar Anglo-European highlands of Westeros to the Mediterranean warmth of Pentos to the desert sands of Dorne. His characters are perpetually moving through these landscapes, which makes the whole series feel, at times, like a very dramatic, very bloody travel magazine.

Compared to the thousands of pages that comprise the Martin novels, John McPhee’s Oranges seems just a trifle at 149 pages, but it stuck with me all year. Admittedly, I came to this book late—by about 45 years—but the subject matter is so timely it’s worth a reprinting. It’s basically a biography of the orange, which emerges as the Forrest Gump of the fruit world, having hitched a ride to America with Columbus and playing a crucial role in the reign of Louis XIV. McPhee travels to Florida in 1966 to chronicle the then-rapidly industrializing orange juice industry and, amid miles and miles of orange groves, finds it nearly impossible to get a glass of fresh-squeezed. “Oranges” is not a travel book, but it underscores something often experienced by travelers: the distance between what one expects to find in a new place, and the sometimes-disappointing, sometimes-beautifully serendipitous reality.

Maya Kroth’s writing has appeared in Budget Travel, NYLON, Frommer’s, the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Weekly and more.

Doug Mack
When I finally got around to reading David Grann’s The Lost City of Z this year, I raced through it in just a couple of days—or rather, a couple of long, giddy nights in which I stayed up hours past my bedtime, entranced. It’s the perfect match of writer and subject: Grann, the master reporter for The New Yorker, and a famed Amazonian city that may or may not have ever existed but which has long lured real-life Indiana Jones types like the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett, who set off on his quest for the city in 1925 and was never seen again. Fawcett was a swaggering colonel, an archetypal old-school explorer. Grann, by his own admission, is rather the opposite—he’s an out-of-shape, out-of-his-element writer—and to my mind, that makes his own story of trekking in the Amazon all the more interesting and appealing because, well, I can identify with him.

I’ve long thought, though, that some of the best travel stories are the ones that take a unique perspective on familiar places, which is why I also loved Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number, a collection of essays including several set on the road. These tales are more on-the-beaten-path than Grann’s—Alaska, Lisbon—but unequivocally offbeat in tone, and therein lies the charm. Crosley’s style is breezy and humorous, but mixed in with her perfectly crafted bon mots and tales are subtle but compelling ruminations on what makes a place worth visiting or living in, and the joys of serendipitous encounters on the road. It’s a compelling testament to why we travel, one whose very brilliance lies in its reliance not on platitudes but on story and wit.

Doug Mack is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis. His travel memoir Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day will be published in April 2012 by Perigee Books/Penguin.

Kim Mance
I read a biography of scientist Nikola Tesla, Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney. It gives a fascinating look at one of the most eccentric and underrated inventors of the 20th century. It also follows him around the world from Croatia to Yugoslavia, Budapest, Paris, London, New York, Colorado and Chicago at the peak of the industrial revolution. Tesla’s enigmatic experiments were enthusiastically funded by the likes of George Westinghouse and J.P. Morgan, allowing unprecedented ingenuity. His world-changing inventions brought him to fame as they bewitched the public, Golden Age socialites, and high-profile friends like Mark Twain. But media wars with arch rivals like Thomas Edison and his lack of demanding royalties on patented inventions (still) used throughout the world left Tesla to eventually die broke, alone, and absent in most U.S. history books. The author does a terrific job of bringing context, interactions, and innovative wonder to life in vivid detail. The book should not be judged by its (dumb) cover; it’s an absolutely fantastic way to geek out on science, history, travel, and to be inspired by an almost unlimited imagination.

Kim Mance is a travel writer, host of Galavanting.tv, and organizes the annual TBEX conferences of travel bloggers in North America and Europe.

Pam Mandel
While traveling through Tanzania in September, I read—well, actually, I listened to an audio version of—The Tree Where Man Was Born, Peter Matthiessen’s account of his travels in that country. During the day, I’d watch the landscape unfold and at night, while I tried to sleep in my tent, I listened to Matthiessen’s descriptions of some of the very places I’d been that day. It was as though Mattheissen was teaching me to write about what I was seeing—the language was spare and beautiful and while not romanticizing the country, it felt honest as it reflected so much of what I’d witnessed with my own eyes. The day I hit the chapter when locals warn Matthiessen off taking a particular track into the savannah—“Hey, there are lions there!”—I heard lions roaring in the night. The book is inseparable from my own Tanzania experience. I’ll read it again when I find myself having trouble remembering what my trip was like and I suspect it will all come rushing back.

Pam Mandel is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in a variety of print, radio, and web publications and she’s contributed to two guidebooks. Learn more at her personal blog at Nerd’s Eye View.

Andrew McCarthy
My favorite book I read this year was Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids. It’s a travel book in the sense that it takes you to a 1970’s New York I would have loved to have known. I’m reading Paul Bowles’ Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. He really captures place. My favorite essays: “A Challenge to Identity,” on the nature of travel writing, and “An Island of My Own” about the private island he owned for a time.

Also I really enjoyed the new book from Richard Grant, Crazy River, about a trip to East Africa. Don’t know why he did it. But I know he’s crazy. I also really enjoyed Uneasy Rider, by an Englishman named Mike Carter, about a motorcycle ride through Europe. He’s good, boozy company.

Andrew McCarthy is an editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler, as well as an actor and director.

Rolf Potts
A lot of travel-themed books stood out for me this year. In the fiction realm, I loved the far-flung short stories in Anthony Doerr’s The Shell Collector—and Tony D’Souza’s novel Mule offered an engrossing depiction of low-level drug running in the United States. In the nonfiction arena, Paul Theroux’s The Tao of Travel was a great compendium of travel wisdom—and I’ll be the millionth person to point out that John Jeremiah Sullivan’s essay collection Pulphead is brilliant.

My top two travel-oriented books of the year would have to be Karl Taro Greenfeld’s short story collection, NowTrends, and On Holiday, Orvar Lofgren’s history of vacationing. Greenfeld’s book (which was published by Short Flight/Long Drive Books, a tiny independent press) offers an authentic and affecting look into various corners of Asia, Europe, and North America. Though obviously fiction, “NowTrends” has a journalistic attention to setting and detail—which is no surprise, since Greenfeld cut his teeth as a writer for magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated. Lofgren’s book takes an academic and analytical approach to travel, but I found it accessible and full of quotable details about how Westerners have approached travel over the years.

Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, and Marco Polo Didn’t Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer.

Robert Reid
Among many other books, I read Alain de Botton’s A Week at the Airport. More books should be like this, short and with photos. Also, Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, which is ridiculously good, essentially a who’s-who travelogue of ‘20s Paris. And Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, which some say is the great Canadian novel (‘40s Quebec).

But my favorite book was Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier. Bitten by “Russia-love” decades ago, Frazier spent as long on “Travels in Siberia” as Axl Rose did on “Chinese Democracy”: 17 years. Most would take just a portion of the book—like a 9,000-mile trip with a bad van and two bad Russian guides—and let that stand for Siberia, but that’s just not enough for Frazier, who returns on several exhausting trips (none of which, it’s worth pointing out, are on the Trans-Siberian Railway). It’s memorable for the sweet dedication poachers give Frazier on 9/11 and a babushka breathlessly retelling the tale of how flamingos fell from the sky. “Russia is both great and horrible,” Frazier writes early on. After spending months of my life in Russia and Siberia myself, I know the feeling.

Robert Reid is the U.S. travel editor for Lonely Planet. He writes and speaks about travel from his base in New York City.

Jill Robinson
I read An Irreverent Curiosity, David Farley’s tale of a weirdly fascinating relic and its shared history with the equally weirdly fascinating Italian town of Calcata. It had me laughing so frequently on a flight to Colombia that I attracted both amused and angry stares. In reading it, I learned plenty about strange religion, and I convinced my local bookseller to carry the book when I returned home.

Jill K. Robinson is a Half Moon Bay-based writer who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Journey, Lonely Planet and Frommer’s, among other publications.

Dan Saltzstein
Allow me to combine an introduction and a disclosure: all three of these are books by friends (and, in one case, a colleague), and only one is really a travel book. But all come thoroughly recommended.

Over the course of my buddy Kim Severson’s book Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life—part memoir, part food celebration—she revisits the women behind the experiences that defined her as a dining reporter for The New York Times (she’s now the Atlanta bureau chief), taking her from California (Alice Waters, Marion Cunningham) to the Deep South (Edna Lewis, Leah Chase). It’s a lovingly written and amazingly honest thing—and Kim’s lively voice pulls it all together.

Tony Perrottet has carved out quite a niche for himself in the travel writing world: delighted degenerate—and I mean that in the most loving way. In The Sinner’s Grand Tour, he drags his wife and two kids around Europe, as he surveys only the most scandalous of locations. It’s terrific fun.

Jim Meehan runs PDT, my favorite cocktail bar in New York. And like the bar, to which you get access via a telephone booth with a fake back door, his PDT Cocktail Book is a reflection of Jim’s encyclopedic knowledge and unending love of all things cocktail. Through it, I’ve discovered long-lost recipes (the De La Lousiane, which dates to the early 20th century, is now part of my regular drinking repertoire) and was dazzled by both Jim’s writing and Chris Gall’s wonderful WPA-style illustrations.

Dan Saltzstein is assistant editor of The New York Times Travel section.

Jenna Schnuer
Instead of traditional travel writing, I tend to do my mind wandering through fiction, memoir, cookbooks, whatever. When I made my first trip to Ireland in 1999, it felt more like a return trip thanks, for the most part, to a thorough reading (and re-reading) of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy. It’s been a decade since my last visit but I returned to Doyle’s Dublin with the trilogy this year and, though it upped my must-go-back to an almost painful level, it still satisfies. I also finally read Doyle’s short story collection, The Deportees. The stories of Ireland’s immigrant population helped update me on the ways the country’s language and flow has changed. I can’t wait to hear and see it all for myself. Ireland is high atop my list of airline tickets to buy for 2012.

But I also did some wordy travel back in time (and back to my home turf) through Patti Smith’s Just Kids. I’ll admit I wasn’t as taken with the whole of the book as many other people I know but spending time with Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea and around Andy Warhol just deepened what is already my crazy love for the city. Oh, one last one: a mystery. Because I’m just about physically unable to write something about travel without trying to work some Alaska into it: the first book in Stan Jones’ Nathan Active mystery series, White Sky, Black Ice. The mystery in the book was a good tale but spending part of a winter in remote Northwest Alaska without fighting frostbite-evil cold was even better.

A freelance writer and editor for publications including National Geographic Traveler, Viv, and Entrepreneur, Jenna Schnuer has a no-permanent-address life. She has a car named Zeb. Read more of her work online at www.jennaschnuer.com and see some of her photos here.

Tom Swick
The best travel book I read in 2011 was a novel published in 2009: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, by Geoff Dyer. Dyer is good on Venice, but when he gets to Varanasi the writing soars and then descends, brilliantly, into madness. I enjoyed James Attlee’s Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight, not just for his descriptions of moon-besotted places (Japan, Naples, Arizona) but for his dogged discoveries of the satellite in art and literature. And I was moved by the final sentences in Oliver Sacks’ The Mind’s Eye, which mount a strong, if inadvertent, defense of travel writing. “Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible,” Sacks writes after telling of a blind woman who travels with friends and asks them to describe to her the scenes in front of them. “It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.” 

Tom Swick is the author of two books: a travel memoir, “Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland,” and a collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler. He was the travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for 19 years.

Jeffrey Tayler
This past year, as in years past, I’ve returned to the greatest travel book of all time, Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Greatest because Cervantes sends his hero (and sidekick) on a literarily-inspired journey that both covers a lot of ground, and leads to self-knowledge. As a true journey should.

Jeffrey Tayler is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and the author of many books, including “River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia’s Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny.” His second book, Facing the Congo, ranked No. 28 on World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books of all time.

Rob Verger
By far the best book I read in 2011 was Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. There was a lot in this book that engaged me, from the discussions of English literature in the beginning to the complex and dark relationship between two of the main characters, Madeleine and Leonard. But I also loved the travel aspect of this novel, as two characters backpack across Europe, North Africa and India. In this passage, depicting Mitchell and Larry’s arrival in Paris, Eugenides’ descriptions are vivid and straightforward, which are two of the qualities I appreciate most in prose: “The trees were thick with late-summer leaves. They wore iron grilles around their trunks, like aprons. The broadness of the sidewalk accommodated newspaper kiosks, dog walkers, chic ten-year-old girls on their way to the park. A sharp scent of tobacco arose from the curbside, which was the way Mitchell had thought Europe would smell, earthy, sophisticated, and unhealthy, all at once.”

Rob Verger is a reporter for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Christopher Vourlias
In the spring of 1989, the poet Czeslaw Milosz returned to his native Lithuania, newly independent, after 50 years in exile. The collection of poems he wrote there, Facing the River, has always found a place in my backpack during my travels, as the aging poet meditated on loss, memory, the passage of time, and, as always, the richness of the human experience. In “Lithuania, After Fifty-Two Years,” he reflects on the changes to both himself and the village of his childhood, “simultaneously, year after year, losing leaves…and again…gathered in our common old age.” A place, he suggests, doesn’t exist in itself: It exists in the ever-changing eye of its beholder.

Travel, for me, has always been as much about coming back as going. The Brooklyn of my youth—its row houses and ailanthus trees and plaster saints in the gardens—has changed through the years; its place in my heart hasn’t. Coming back for the holidays this year, faced with the same stirrings of memory and longing, I return to Milosz’s plea to the world of his youth to somehow keep time at bay:

Be yourselves, things of this earth, be yourselves!
Don’t rely on us, on our breath,
On the fancies of our treacherous and avid eye.
We long for you, for your essence,
For you to last as you are in yourselves:
Pure, not looked at by anybody.

Christopher Vourlias is a freelance writer based out of Johannesburg.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom
My favorite new travel book of the year was Tom Scocca’s Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future. As I wrote in my review for TIME Asia, the “same sort of equal-opportunity irreverence” you find in Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad (which stands at the top of my all-time top travel books list) is on “abundant display” in this look at Beijing, which is as unsparing toward American foibles as it is toward Chinese ones. The other book that stands out for me from this year of travel reading is one that I can’t believe I went so long without reading, Emma Larkin’s extraordinary Finding George Orwell in Burma. It’s an elegantly crafted work, which combines evocative and often amusing descriptions of people and places with deft analysis of the workings of a difficult to penetrate and particularly harsh authoritarian regime. This very special book first appeared six years ago but it makes wonderfully timely reading at a moment when there has been renewed hope at last that at least modest changes in the Burmese political situation may be on the way.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a contributor to World Hum, is the author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know and a frequent contributor to the China Beat blog.

Terry Ward
I may know what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. But whenever I wander streets home to Turkish immigrant communities in German cities or the stripmall gathering zones of the Vietnamese community here in Orlando, it hits me that I’ll never know what it’s like to be part of a tight knit immigrant crowd. So I enjoyed reading Doug Saunders’ book Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Shaping our World that explores these worlds within worlds in such cities as Los Angeles, Mumbai, Berlin and Herndon, VA, close to where I grew up. In his preface, Saunders had this to say: “The great migration of humans is manifesting itself in the creation of a special kind of urban place. These transitional spaces—arrival cities—are the places where the next great economic and cultural boom will be born, or where the next great explosion of violence will occur. The difference depends on our ability to notice, and our willingness to engage.” The more I travel—both in the US and abroad—the more that hits home.

Terry Ward is a freelance writer based in Florida.

Tara Austen Weaver
I’m fascinated by the tea trade and its history, so the story of Robert Fortune, the Scottish gardener charged by the East India Company with infiltrating China in the mid-1800s to steal tea plants and growing secrets, was fascinating. He traveled deep into China dressed in Mandarin robes, fought bandits and pirates, and ended up pulling off the greatest act of espionage ever, breaking Chinese hold on the tea trade. For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History, by Sarah Rose, is the story of how it happened, and how the seeds and plants Fortune smuggled out paved the way for Britain to grow their own tea on Indian soil. It’s a crazy, implausible historical adventure travel story, the result of which is sitting in my tea cup.

Tara Austen Weaver is a freelance food and travel writer. She is author of “The Butcher The Vegetarian: One Woman’s Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis,” and writes the award-winning blog Tea Cookies.

Eric Weiner
I was just in India, and picked up a couple of good reads. One is Mark Tully’s India’s Unending Journey. The title is a bit misleading. The book is actually part autobiography and part modern history of India. Tully is a giant among India-philes. He was born in Calcutta, raised in the UK and spent most of his adult life back in India. He was the BBC’s man in South Asia for years and was so well known (and loved) that any foreigner with a microphone, including myself, was often accosted by a group of adoring Indians shouting “Mark Tully!” They were always disappointed when I told them that, no, I was not Mark Tully. So Tully knows of what he writes. What I love about this book is that it is both knowledgeable and affectionate. Tully clearly loves India but his love is not a blind love.

I’m also reading Duncan Campbell’s novel, The Paradise Trail. This is more of a beach read, but a very smart one. It takes place in Calcutta in 1971 during the India-Pakistan War (also known as Bangladesh’s war of independence). I’ve re-read a couple of favorites this year, too, including Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. It’s the book version of his famous monologue and Gray’s voice—manic, confessional, funny—comes across on every page. And I’m enjoying Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. While not technically a travel book—Calvino’s cities are imaginary—this is nonetheless a gem. Sitting in a garden, a young Marco Polo relays to an aging Kublai Khan tales of the cities he has seen: cities of the dead and the unborn, cities of the air, cities where everyone is a stranger. A work of immense imagination, it’s one of those books best savored slowly, and often.

Eric Weiner is author of Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine and The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World. He is a former foreign correspondent with National Public Radio, and a former reporter for The New York Times.

Michael Yessis
David Mitchell dazzled me with the craft and complexity of his 2004 novel Cloud Atlas, which contains six interlocked narratives spanning from an 1800s voyage on the Pacific to a post-apocalyptic future in Hawaii. The four other narratives take place in 1930s Belgium, 1970s California, a now-ish UK and a future Korea. Among the things I loved about it: the emphasis on the power of storytelling through generations.

Michael Yessis is cofounder and coeditor of World Hum, and a special projects editor at USA Today.

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3 Comments for Reading Travel: New and Old Books We Loved This Year

Samantha O.

12.20.11 | 8:43 PM ET

Great article! I myself am presently studying abroad in Beijing and like to read travel books about China. Some of my favorites are:

1) Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip by Peter Hessler

2) The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze by Simon Winchester

3) CHINA: Portrait of a People by Tom Carter

4) Red Dust: A Path Through China by Ma Jian

Bob Payne

12.22.11 | 7:09 PM ET

A useful list, and just the excuse (flimsy, I know) to say something about travel tweets. My only disappointment with the list is the scant mention of Mark Twain, who every travel writer wishing to inject a bit of humor into his or her work should dip into on a regular basis. In my own travels, I can never climb aboard any kind of beast without remembering Twain’s words about a fellow in Hawaii who was outfitting him for a ride: “I would like to have an excessively gentle horse—a horse with no spirit whatever—a lame one, if he had such a thing.”  However, as humorist Andy Borowitz recently wrote, if Twitter had been around in Twain’s time he would have been great at it, but would never have gotten around to writing Huckleberry Finn. As I find my own pleasure in travel writing shifting from the long form to what is possible with 140 characters, such as I practice it @BobTravelsWell, I think the tradeoff may have been a good one.

Jim Benning

12.22.11 | 8:27 PM ET

Great comment, Bob.

Of course we love Twain. As it happens, we just added a few more entries to the feature, including favorite reads from China expert Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who invokes Twain.

Good morning from Cedar Rapids. We are 11 days out from the Iowa caucuses. We here at Good Morning Iowa are always open to news tips, suggestions, and praise…critiques too. Thanks to the other morning notes that this takes much of its inspiration from. We love all the suggestions and tips we have received since we started…and all our new readers! 

It’s only Michele Bachmann campaigning in the state today ahead of the Christmas weekend. She’s on Day Eight of her bus tour and is making six stops. She starts at 9AM in Bloomfield with a coffee stop then visits Centerville, Corydon, Chariton, Pella, and then finishes the tour in Newton. She picks up again on Tuesday for two more days and then she will have completed all 99 counties otherwise known as The Full Grassley.

Weather: It is only 12 degrees now in Cedar Rapids, but it will warm up to be in the 30s and sunny this afternoon.GMI is taking off for the weekend because your loyal correspondent is  heading out of the Hawkeye state, but I will return and so will GMI. I hope everyone has a restful holiday and gets some time off the trail and with their families. Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah from GMI. 

Check out The Note today for more detail on the growing controversy surrounding Bob Vander Plaats endorsement of Rick Santorum. The Christian conservative was soliciting up to one million dollars from the campaign and was seeking out money from campaigns last cycle as well: Less than 48-hours after receiving the backing of Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the prominent evangelical group The Family Leader, Santorum disclosed that the prominent Iowan told him he needed money to make the most out of the endorsement.

And sources familiar with talks between the conservative heavyweight and representatives from several of the Republican presidential campaigns went a step further, describing Vander Plaats’ tactics as corrupt.

“Clearly the endorsement was for sale — without a doubt,” one source said…Though Santorum did not specify the dollar amount he and Vander Plaats discussed, multiple sources said he was soliciting as much as $1 million from Santorum and other candidates…ABC News has learned that Vander Plaats tried to solicit money for his endorsement during the last presidential cycle too.

A former staffer for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid who is currently unaffiliated with a campaign said Vander Plaats came to them seeking money for his backing if he supported the former Massachusetts governor. Read it here: http://abcn.ws/tTA5ie

This is the front page Cedar Rapids residents are waking up to today: http://bit.ly/vHntaZ

What’s in the Gazette?

Paul: James Q. Lynch was at Ron Paul’s events in Manchester and Cedar Rapids yesterday and reports on the enthusiasm he’s being greeted with in the state:  His rivals are beating him up for his foreign policy positions, but Ron Paul is finding plenty of support among Iowa caucus goers for his non-interventionist philosophy. Paul’s reluctance to get tough with Iran as well as his call to end foreign aid and bring all troops home has made him an easy target for other 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls. It’s also made him an easy choice for some caucus goers. Justus Thompson of Brooklyn, Iowa, and Molly Franta of Elkader were impressed enough with Paul when he visited the University of Northern Iowa, where they are students, to attended his rally at the Delaware County Fairgrounds in Manchester Dec. 22. Mostly, they said, it was Paul’s anti-war philosophy that attracted them. ”Ron Paul sees the value in not trying to control the world,” Thompson said. “There are several reasons, but the economy is the biggest – we can’t afford to keep doing it.”…A couple of chairs down the row, Franta’s father, John, sounded  similar themes, saying he plans to caucus for Paul because of his opposition to war – “current and prospective,” ”They’re immoral, unnecessary and costly,” the elder Franta said. http://bit.ly/sE9BsA

Paul will be returning to the state next week: http://bit.ly/vOhsDk

GMI also spent the day with Paul yesterday and found large, adoring crowds that included Dems: http://abcn.ws/vLylYC He also spoke about his foreign policy throughout the day including his thoughts on 9/11 and his belief that Iran will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon: ”I’m worried about it too, but maybe not in the same way as some others worry about it. I worry about us overreacting on Iran like we did in Iraq,” Paul said. “I think what’s going on now is not too dissimilar with Iran. Iran is not a physical threat to us. They do not have capabilities. The stories you might hear about them being on the verge of a nuclear weapon is not true by our CIA and by the United Nations they are not on the verge of it. Does that mean I don’t care? Yeah I care. I don’t want them to get a weapon.” Paul said even if Iran does get a nuclear weapon that conservatives in favor of preventing the country from developing one and support intervention to stop the development are just worried that Iran will get a nuclear weapon and won’t use it and “all their fear mongering didn’t work.” ”Who are they going to bomb?” Paul said referring to Iran. “If they had one or two bombs, they are going to bomb Israel? Israel has 300 of them! And our submarines all around there passing and everything else.” http://abcn.ws/s3RAAk

Back to the Gazette:

Bachmann: Lynch was also at one of Bachmann’s bus tour stops yesterday. Make sure to check out the quote from the still-undecided voter: Michele Bachmann revved up the Dec. 22 leg of her 99-county bus tour by hopping on a vintage motorcycle at the National Motorcycle Museum. Bachmann, who is about three-quarters of the way through her pre-caucus tour, made a quick look around the museum after asking 50-some people for their support in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses Jan. 3. Like she does in every county, Bachmann also made a video that will be part of an invitation to supporters in each county to come out to the caucuses. The invitation also will include information on how to caucus. Many in the audience said they have Bachmann on their short list, but haven’t decided who they’ll support Jan. 3. ”Absolutely not,” Rob DeSotel of Anamosa said when asked if he knew who he would support. Herman Cain was his leading candidate before suspending his campaign. Now he’s leaning toward Bachmann.”I think she has more of a connection to the Midwest and the middle-class,” DeSotel said. Bob Vondran of Monticello is going back and forth between Bachman and Rick Santorum. He believes both are honest and he appreciates their support for “family values.” ”I’ve got a couple of more days to figure it out,” he said. http://bit.ly/uGgtzz

Christopher Larimer gives his take on the state of the race: http://bit.ly/udVyw0

Jennifer Hemmingsen has a really interesting column exploring if sexism is at work behind the call for Bachmann to bow out of the race: http://bit.ly/uwIpKx

This is the front page Des Moines residents are waking up to today: http://bit.ly/s0wS1q

What’s in the Register? 

Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) has more on  the legality around Vander Plaats endorsement firestorm: The Register confirmed Tuesday that Vander Plaats had asked for help in raising money to promote the endorsement. In an interview, he was careful to say he didn’t ask any campaign itself to give money. Just having a conversation about future advertisements could run afoul of federal rules, Ryan said. It’s off-limits for an outside group and a candidate to coordinate spending for an ad buy, he said. Ads cannot be produced based on the candidate’s suggestions. For example, the candidate can’t suggest content, request which TV stations to go up on, or discuss timing of an ad. Nor can any agent of the candidate or campaign communicate these details. “There’s no easy end run around the rules,” Ryan said. Asked for specifics about the conversation on advertising between Vander Plaats and Santorum that day earlier this fall, a campaign spokesman declined to share details…Santorum could legally ask others to give money to a super PAC connected to Vander Plaats as long as he made clear that he wasn’t soliciting checks in excess of $5,000 and that he wasn’t asking for union or corporate donations, Ryan said. (Those would fall under the soft money solicitation ban.) Candidates can legally help with fundraising in other ways, too. They can attend a fundraiser for a super PAC or other outside group as the featured guest. An organizer could take the microphone and ask for unlimited donations — as long as the candidates don’t make the request themselves, Ryan said. http://dmreg.co/sgQIud

Gingrich: Jacobs has another great piece looking at Gingrich’s past and if his call now to restore civility in politics is hypocritical: Read it here: http://dmreg.co/sPWFA8

Joe vs Mitt? Vice President Joe Biden has an opinion piece in today’s Register and he goes after Romney: Romney appears satisfied to settle for an economy in which fewer people succeed, while the majority of Americans are left to tread water or fall behind. His proposal would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class. Romney also misleadingly suggests that the president and I are creating an “Entitlement Society,” whereby government provides everything for its people without regard to merit, as opposed to what he calls an “Opportunity Society,” where everything is merit-based and every man is left to fend for himself. The only entitlement we believe in is an America where if you work hard, you can get ahead. Read it here: http://dmreg.co/s9gkYy

And just moments ago in New Hampshire Romney responded to the op-ed, ABC’s Emily Friedman reports. The candidate called it ”another gaffe” by Biden and wondered “if he’s living in a fantasy world.”

Paul: Mary Stegmeir (@marystegmeir) was with Ron Paul yesterday and also witnessed his passionate supporters, many of them Democrats:  Democrat Travis Bockenstedt of Cedar Rapids told the congressman he was “on the verge of converting.” ”I am a gay Iowan, and one thing that I do like is that you’re staying out of my bedroom,” said the 24-year-old, whose remarks were applauded. Bockenstedt then added: “I know you have your feelings about that and that’s OK. I’m not going to trust any politician that would be a single-issue politician this season. That is not what our country needs.” http://dmreg.co/rywjh0

Bachmann: Jason Noble (@jasonnoble1) has an interesting report from the Bachmann bus tour where her supporters are raising the possible sexism issue as well:  During a stop at the Doose Café in Marengo on Thursday afternoon, former state Rep. Danny Carroll raised the gender issue specifically, telling the crowd that a passage from the Book of Exodus referring to women “usurping” power from men did not apply in Bachmann’s run for the White House. ”Pastors that I talk with recognize that Michele is in a right relationship with her pastor, her church and her husband,” Carroll said in an interview afterward. “She is not looking to usurp authority over her husband or over her church or pastor. But she is simply holding herself out as a candidate for public office.”…Brad Sherman, the pastor at Solid Rock Christian Church in Coralville and a Bachmann supporter, said he believed some evangelicals had expressed concerns on the issue, and perhaps were throwing their support to another socially-conservative candidate as a result. ”I know it’s an issue to some people,” Sherman said. “How many, I don’t know. It could be the big elephant in the room.” But, he stressed, his interpretation of scripture indicated such concerns were misplaced. ”She’s in a proper relationship with her husband spiritually. That’s a key point,” Sherman said.  http://dmreg.co/sIRHbu

Bachmann: Noble also has the eye popping numbers from the bus tour: http://dmreg.co/tDPsgY

And Even More Bachmann: Occupy Protesters stopped by one of her bus stops yesterday: About two dozen activists with Occupy Iowa City packed the diner before Bachmann arrived Thursday, then loudly chanted in unison as she tried to mingle with supporters. Their chant blasted the Minnesota congresswoman’s position on gay rights, health care and taxes and ended with: “You’re not wanted here. So go, just go.” http://usat.ly/vbJmGF

Perry: Josh Hafner (@joshhafner) reports that Perry stopped his stump speech yesterday to remember a deceased Iowan and Navy SEAL: ”I wear a — I wear a little band, matter of fact one of your Iowans, who was killed on the sixth day of August this last year, who was one of those Navy SEALS that went down in a helicopter, Jon Tumilson, to remind me about my duty to make sure those young men and women have the support they need as they serve on active duty.” Tumilson, a Rockford native, was one of 30 Americans killed last summer under attack from enemy forces in Afghanistan. His death became well-known after moving images of his dog lying on the floor near Tumilson’s coffin went viral. http://dmreg.co/sEeSY4

Jason Clayworth (@jasonclayworth) reports that conservative talk show host Steve Deace will be holding  a tele-townhall next week. Four of the candidates have confirmed: Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum, and Rick Perry: http://dmreg.co/rWM5Jr

Endorsement Watch: 

Romney: Yesterday, he nabbed the support of President George H. W. Bush and the former Massachusetts governor put out a list of 25 current or former public Iowa officials backing him: http://dmreg.co/uk4pNZ

Air Wars:

Perry: Jennifer Jacobs has the details on his new holiday television ad, “President of Honor,” that will air this weekend: http://dmreg.co/vRZ8oc

Paul: The campaign wives did it and now Ron Paul’s son, Rand appears in a Christmas-themed ad for his father: ABC’s Jason Volack reports: The Kentucky Senator and Tea Party favorite is shown sitting in front of a Christmas tree as he notes the origins of the Tea Party movement. Rand says that his “father stood against the establishment and against government bailouts” adding he “has always stayed true to his principles and his convictions” and won’t falter and bend. http://abcn.ws/sePwZP

Romney: ABC’S John Berman reports that the Romney SuperPAC “Restore our Future” will not be airing ads this weekend. Gingrich get a negative ad break in his stocking. Watch Berman’s piece on the big endorsement and the candidates’ Christmas plans and wish lists: http://abcn.ws/uN1pH9 

Santorum: The former Pennsylvania is out with a new television ad this morning titled “Pop Up” featuring his family and pop up stats about them. It also includes that Sarah Palin praise again.  http://bit.ly/tb0M7W

More Santorum: Tony Leys (@tonyleys) reports the candidate spoke at the funeral for his super-volunteer who died last week: http://dmreg.co/tCjEgD

Paul-mentum: Craig Robinson (@IowaGOPer) has a great piece on the GOP “freaking out” over the possibility of a Paul win here: http://bit.ly/uNDbR0

Perry: Arlette Saenz (@ArletteSaenz) reports on the end of this leg of the Texas governor’s bus tour: http://abcn.ws/tnG6LT And also from Arlette you will want to read what interrupted Perry’s speech in Burlington, Iowa yesterday: http://abcn.ws/vof6TO

More Perry: Saenz also reports he went after the president for the extension of the payroll tax cut: ”His priorities are so messed up. He’s worried about a temporary tax cut when we ought to be talking about freeing entrepreneurs so that they have the confidence that they can create jobs in this country, putting people back to work. That’s what this president ought to be talking about, but he’s more interested in playing politics,” Perry said to a crowd of just under 100 voters at Kuhly’s Bar Grill. http://abcn.ws/tDdXJT 

And Even More Perry:The candidate got on the press bus yesterday to talk about Christmas. From Arlette: “Here’s what they hate because I take my video camera out, and I video them in bed and you know,  they’re like pulling the cover over their head, and they’re like ‘Come on dad. You know like we’re grown, would you cut it out?’” Perry said laughing. “Now they’re 28 and 25, and last year at 27 and 24, there were pictures of them, you know, getting up and walking in and the Christmas tree and opening the presents and the wiener dog and the black lab we’d, you know, tie bows around them.” ”That is our typical Christmas. You know, it’s kind of like, ‘Dad you are so lame,’” Perry said. “I think they would be disappointed if I didn’t do it, so we have fun.”Perry said his daughter is normally showered with “Christmas presents year around,” and his wife, Anita, is never surprised by her gift Christmas morning. ”Actually, my wife and I have a deal. She picks her Christmas present and I pay for it,” Perry said. “It’s a nice bag. I haven’t seen it yet.” http://abcn.ws/uZ8X8I

The LA Times’  (and GMI friends) Robin Abcarian (@rabcarian) and Seema Mehta (@LATSeema) have a fantastic look at the onslaught of negative ads here and how the electorate is reacting to them: ”Oh goodness,” said Jill Jepsen, 57, a retired department store employee who lives in Oskaloosa and supports former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “I just don’t listen to it. I can’t listen to it. It makes me sick.” http://lat.ms/vcu91p

The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog (@fivethirtyeight) has some number crunching that will be music to the ears of Bachmann and Santorum: http://nyti.ms/tQWoHN

Politico’s Jonathan Martin (@jmartpolitico) and Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) have an interesting interview with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad: ”We’ve never seen such a tumultuous situation,” Branstad told POLITICO in the latest installment of the “On the Line” audio series. “They’re looking for the perfect candidate, but hopefully at the end of the day, they’re going to recognize nobody’s perfect, but they need to sort out and choose the strongest candidate, because I think most people in this state and across the country believe that we cannot afford four more years of Barack Obama.” But Branstad said he won’t be telling them whom he wants them to go with via an endorsement ahead of the Jan. 3 vote. ”I think maybe after the caucuses, as the race goes forward, at some point I may decide to endorse, but I’m not planning to endorse before the caucuses,” Branstad said. http://politi.co/v6304o

More Paul-mentum: CBS News’ Rodney Hawkins (@Rodney_CBSNJ) interviewed the Texas Congressman and they discussed how his win would be seen in the party:  Rep. Ron Paul says his critics are engaged in “wishful thinking” if they believe that if he wins the upcoming Iowa caucuses, it would discredit the Hawkeye State’s long-established first-in-the-nation political process. ”I don’t know why we have elections if they don’t mean anything,” the Texas congressman told National Journal/CBS News in an interview late Wednesday — though he added that “If you win one caucus, it doesn’t guarantee anything.”…Paul acknowledged that “I have my work cut out for me” because other many Republicans have abandoned the historical views of former Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, who opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who upon leaving office warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” ”I defend my position as a Republican,” Paul said. “So [other Republicans] sort of left that tradition of being less militant. I frequently quote a famous congressman from Iowa, H.R. Gross, and he and I would have voted together completely. He was a civil libertarian and he was a fiscal conservative and he didn’t like any wars going on overseas.” http://bit.ly/rSx9xE

The American Prospect’s Patrick Caldwell (@patwcaldwell) has a great look at Paul’s supporters: Every political generalization has its exception, and I think I finally stumbled upon one yesterday. The people who show up for Ron Paul events aren’t there to weigh the Texas Congressman against the rest of the field; they entered the door certain that Paul is their man. Read it: http://bit.ly/rWK4r7

The American Prospect also takes a look at why Iowa IS the best place to start off voting: http://bit.ly/tFQyHz

Iowa Fact of The Day: Terrace Hill was built in the 1800?s by the first millionaire in Iowa for $250,000.  In the 1970?s the Hubbell family who offered it to the state for the use of the governor and his family and four governors and their families have resided there (Ray, Branstad, Vilsack, Culver, Branstad).  The entire building is open for guided tours and the governor and his family reside in a private apartment on the third floor.

Who’s Tweeting About Iowa?

@JamieNBCNews The Bachmann bus tour will be via Chevy Suburban today — the bus driver has gone home for Christmas. The rest of staff leaves later today.

@FearRicksVest Hearing @RickSantorum may have argyle sweater vests on his Christmas list! We’ll be stylin’ for final week before #iacaucus!

@greenfield64 Beneath Iowa frenzy: a) it’s business as usual; b) retail politics still matters c) Iowans decide LATE. From TPM bit.ly/vZ4f1E

The Schedule:

MICHELE BACHMANN

9:00am CT – Bloomfield, IA: Meet and greet at the Oasis Coffee House (114 South Madison Street, Bloomfield, IA)

1O:00am CT – Centerville, IA: Meet and greet at Tangleberries (104 West Jackson Street, Centerville, IA)

11:00am CT – Corydon, IA: Meet and greet at Lodge Pizza Steakhouse (105 West Jackson Street, Corydon, IA)

12:15pm CT – Chariton, IA: Meet and greet at Papa Leo’s Restaurant (126 North Grand Street, Chariton, IA)

1:40pm CT – Pella, IA: Tour stop at the Christian Opportunity Center (1553 Broadway, Pella, IA)

2:50pm CT – Newton, IA: Meet and greet at Uncle Nancy’s Coffee House (114 North 2^nd Avenue West, Newton, IA)

You can schlep around San Francisco carrying a guidebook or hire a limo to shuttle you around. For the best of both worlds, there’s the GoCar.

These GPS-guided cars, rented by the hour, let drivers explore at their own pace. Not only will they take you to all the city’s highlights, but they’ll also tell you about what you’re looking at through onboard narration.

“One of the great things is we’re not a tour bus,” said GoCar President Nathan Withrington. “The driver is not restricted. You get to see the real San Francisco. You get to get off the beaten path. Our tours go to Sea Cliff; you get to go through parks where buses don’t go; you get to drive on Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world.”

The vehicles have close to 100 miles of routes programmed in, and drivers get options on which route to take.

“If you take them all, you’re pretty much gone all day,” Withrington said. “Take one and you’re done in less than an hour. … It’s all about empowering tourists to go where they want and see what they want.”

Customers get a helmet and a quick explanation: The three-wheeled cars have 50-cc four-cycle Vespa engines, and driving one is akin to driving a motorcycle. Rates start at $49 for the first hour, $39 for the second, $29 for the third, etc. It’s all explained at gocartours.com, 800-914-6227.

The vehicles can reach speeds of 30 to 35 mph, plenty fast to keep up with city traffic. And they have enough oomph to climb most of San Francisco’s hills.

“There are a lot of steep hills in San Francisco; some cars can’t get up them,” Withrington said. “You still get to Twin Peaks, you still go down Lombard Street. But for the really steep ones, you go around the block.”

He’s testing a 150-cc engine that would make those minor detours unnecessary.

One thing that won’t change is the idea of making the ride memorable.

“The goal is to keep it lighthearted, but during the tour we want that person to get those two, three things they’ll talk about at the next cocktail party.”