Out of Africa

West with the Night

Beryl Markham · 293 pages

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.

My Family and Other Animals

Gerald Durrell · 285 pages

My Family and Other Animals is an autobiographical work by naturalist Gerald Durrell, telling of the part of his childhood he spent on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

John Steinbeck · 256 pages

A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the tress, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the

M Train

Patti Smith · 288 pages

M Train is a journey through eighteen "stations." It begins in the tiny Greenwich Village cafâe where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. We then travel across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations: from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico, to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin

We of the Never-Never

Jeannie Gunn · 256 pages

We - are just some of the bush-folk of the Never-Never. In 1902, newly-married Jeannie Gunn (Mrs Aeneas Gunn) left the security and comfort of her Melbourne home to travel to the depths of the Northern Territory, where her husband had been appointed manager of ‘The Elsey', a large cattle station. One of the very few white women in the area, she was at first resented by people on and around the st

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

Mourid Barghouti · 216 pages

In 2000 Mourid Barghouti published I Saw Ramallah, the acclaimed memoir that told of returning in 1996 to his Palestinian home for the first time since exile following the Six-Day War in 1967. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here takes up the story in 1998 when Barghouti returned to the Occupied Territories to introduce his Cairo-born son, Tamim, to his Palestinian family. Ironically, a few years lat

Cross Creek

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings · 368 pages

Warm, leisurely account of author's neighbors, and her everyday affairs while living for thirteen years in a remote section of the Florida hammock at Cross Creek.

Aké: The Years of Childhood

Wole Soyinka · 230 pages

A dazzling memoir of an African childhood from Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian novelist, playwright, and poet Wole Soyinka. "Aké: The Years of Childhood" gives us the story of Soyinka's boyhood before and during World War II in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria called Aké. A relentlessly curious child who loved books and getting into trouble, Soyinka grew up on a parsonage compound, raised by Ch

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s

Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough · 247 pages

Two ingenues "do the Continent" pre-WWII. Skinner takes us from the innocence of youth in the 1920s to the dawn of WWII, replete with all the faux pas and fiascoes you would expect from youth taking Europe on their own in the early part of the twentieth century when innocence still existed and innuendo was unheard of. A great read.

Heart Earth

Ivan Doig · 168 pages

Readers will come to appreciate the strength and dignity of Berneta Ringer, a true Western heroine as Doig celebrates his mother's life after finding a cache of her letters, photographs, and childhood writings. It begins with her first winter living in a tent in Montana's Crazy Mountains to the ravages of the Depression on a ranch on Falkner Creek.

Last Days of the Bus Club

Chris Stewart · 270 pages

It's two decades since Chris Stewart moved to his farm on the wrong side of a river in the mountains of southern Spain and his daughter Chloe is preparing to fly the nest for university. In this latest, typically hilarious dispatch from El Valero we find Chris, now a local literary celebrity, using his fame to help his old sheep-shearing partner find work on a raucous road trip; cooking a TV lunch

Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over

Geraldine Brooks · 240 pages

Under the Tuscan Sun

Frances Mayes · 287 pages

Now in paperback, the #1 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller that is an enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's *A Year in Provence*. Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos b

River Of Time

Jon Swain · 281 pages

Jon Swain left Britain as a teenager, driven by his ambition to travel to far-away places, explore life on the borders of death, and escape from the straitjacket of a conventional and orderly English existence. After a brief stint with the French Foreign Legion he became a journalist in Paris, but soon ended up in Vietnam and Cambodia. So began an adventure and a love affair with the countries of

Blankets

Craig Thompson · 592 pages

Loosely based on the author's life, chronicling his journey from childhood to adulthood, exploring the people, experiences, and beliefs that he encountered along the way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Robert M. Pirsig · 418 pages

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Haruki Murakami · 179 pages

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway · 209 pages

A Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir belles-lettres by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously.[1] The book details Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and his associations with other cultural figures of the Lost Generation in Interwar France. The memoir consists of various per

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

A Walker in the City

Alfred Kazin · 176 pages

The acclaimed story of a soul awakening to the ecstasy of the senses, the power of language, and the meaning of existence. Kazin's memorable description of his life as a young man as he makes the journey from Brooklyn to "Americanca"--The larger world that begins at the other end of the subway in Manhattan. A classic portrayal of the Jewish immigrant culture of the 1930s.

Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir

Agatha Christie Mallowan, Agatha Christie · 192 pages

Agatha Christie was already a celebrated writer of mysteries in 1930 when she married archaeologist Max Mallowan. She enthusiastically joined him on archaeological expeditions in the Middle East, providing backgrounds for novels and "everyday doings and happenings". Pre-war Syria years are remembered here, not chronologically, but in a cluster of vignettes about servants and aristocrats who pepper

A Time of Gifts

Patrick Leigh Fermor · 304 pages

The author presents a chronicle of his journey, at the age of 18, on foot across central Europe, through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire, up the Rhine, and down to the Danube, capturing an unrecoverable time in Europe before the devastation of World War II.

Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas

Ruskin Bond · 251 pages

All Things Bright and Beautiful

James Herriot · 384 pages