Writer’s Blog: What’s On A Long-Distance Cyclist’s Bookshelf?

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You generate a lot of free time on the road. To observe, to create images, to think. Often it’s nice to simply empty your head entirely and think of nothing at all. But I have been able to do a ton of reading in my tent at night, during lazy lunch-breaks, while waiting for friends to finish packing.

Al Salam Camp, Luxor, Egypt

This is a list of some of the books I read on the road. I don’t doubt for a second that I learned as much from them as from my travels themselves, nor that some of the styles I learned to like will rub off on the shape my own book takes:

I rarely finish a book if it doesn’t grab me pretty quickly, but I read all of these from cover to cover. I realise that my inner geek is well and truly exposed by this list. There’s a lot of pop-science, some travelogues, a few bits of escapist fiction and several odds and ends that don’t really fit anywhere else. Some are ground-breaking, some most definitely aren’t, but I found all of them worth reading.

My reason for posting this list is to give you the chance to help me with my own book. I’ll get a few pennies if you buy any of these books using the links in the list above. These pennies will hopefully turn into coffees in the quiet Yerevanian cafes I frequent while writing. So if there’s something here which you’ve been thinking about reading, now is a good time to buy a copy!

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