I’ve been flipping through Nancy Pearl’s latest volume of her Book Lust series, Book Lust to Go—Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers.  It makes me want to pack my suitcase and try out a few of the locales for which she has reading suggestions—from Afghanistan to Zambia.  Actually, though I’m an adventurous traveler, I’d prefer to discover Afghanistan and Zambia as an armchair traveler, but the book offers plenty between A and Z for just about anyone interested in the literary side of travel.  Right now I’m looking at the “Veni, Vidi, Venice” section with, yes, lust.

Nancy is probably the world’s most popular librarian; she even has an action figure.  She was here in Minnesota a few weeks ago and spoke at the Southdale library and on Minnesota Public Radio.  You can listen to her interview on the MPR Web site. (Also, FYI, this isn’t Nancy Pearl in the photo above.  It’s Teddy Roosevelt, adventurer extraordinaire.)

She says in the intro to the book that (unlike me) she doesn’t like to travel that much, let alone lust for it. “I’m stymied,” she says, “by the very activities of planning a trip and figuring out an itinerary, choosing dates and what to pack. I’m frustrated by my inability to speak any language except English…. You try finding a Laundromat in Tallinn without knowing Estonian and you’ll soon discover that although everyone has assured you that all Estonians speak at least a rudimentary form of English, that doesn’t really seem to apply to most people over thirty.”

But one of my favorite writers, Bill Bryson, would argue that that’s the best part of traveling. In his book Neither Here Nor There, Travels in Europe, he says, “That’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” I’m looking forward to seeing him tomorrow at Pen Pals.

The language problems can be the least of traveling disasters.  Book Lust to Go has a section that cracks me up: “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”  Who hasn’t had a few mishaps while traveling?  They make the best stories. But these books will make most travelers’ problems and pitfalls look like a day at the beach.  Books such as Jim Malusa’s Into Thick Air:  Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents (think insects, extreme weather and landmines.)  Also, W. Hodding Carter’s Westward Whoa: In the Wake of Lewis and Clark. To that I’d add Candace Millard’s River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey about his unendingly horrible trip down a tributary of the Amazon, a trip full of treacherous guides, starvation, man-eating fish, malaria and much more.  At one point Roosevelt told his son, Kermit, to just leave him there to die.  Really, that’s where I draw the line. So much suffering is just no fun. Nancy Pearl prefers to be a virtual traveler through the pages of a book. If all trips were as bad as Roosevelt’s, I’d be happy to join her for an armchair adventure.