May TravelKIT: Modes of Transportation

Welcome to May in TravelKIT! This month we will be reading about modes of transportation--planes, trains, automobiles, boats--as part of the world of travel.

Recognizing that most of us can't run down to the library to pick up the book we might like to read, I chose examples of reading about kinds of transportation almost entirely from the titles available in Open Library (aka Internet Archive). If you've never used this great site before, you'll need to create a free account, and for many of the books below you'll be borrowing the book for two weeks. A free download of Adobe Digital Editions and an Adobe ID will let you download the book to your computer or a mobile device, or you can read the book in your browser on the site. Be sure to read the PDF, as the epubs on Open Library frequently are almost unreadable.

Boats and Ships
Fiction
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian - nautical adventure/historical fiction, first of the Jack Aubrey series
Death on the Nile (1936) by Agatha Christie - A personal favorite set on a river cruise
The Caine Mutiny (1951) by Herman Wouk - Pulitzer Prize novel set on a Navy warship during World War II
Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-Bound Cat by Caroline Alexander - fiction about a real-life disastrous Antarctic expedition by ship. Alexander's nonfiction about the expedition, The Endurance, may be available on OverDrive from your library
Nonfiction
Dove (1972) by Robin Lee Graham - teenage boy sails alone around the world
Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban - sailing alone from Seattle to the Alaska panhandle
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson - sinking of a luxury liner during World War I

Automobile
Nonfiction
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon - driving on the 2-lane backroads of the US
Fiction
Christine by Stephen King - a possessed car
More ideas: https://lithub.com/10-essential-road-trip-books-that-arent-on-the-road/ (Literary Hub)

Bicycle
Nonfiction
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy
Cold Beer and Crocociles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia by Roff Smith (not available on Open Library)
More ideas: https://www.outsideonline.com/1930366/10-best-books-bicycles (Outside magazine)

Motorcycle
Nonfiction
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Che Guevara

Railroad
Fiction
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie - detection on the Orient Express
Stamboul Train by Graham Greene - spy thriller on the Orient Express
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
More ideas: http://www.librarything.com/list/78/all/Best-public-transport-fiction
Nonfiction
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux - the first of his rail travel narratives

Spaceship
Fiction
Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss - a "Generation Ship" story (for more Generation Ship, see http://www.librarything.com/list/10388/all/Generation-Ship)
More ideas: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/28/top-10-spaceships-in-fiction-jules...
Nonfiction
Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger
Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon by David West Reynolds

Airplane
Fiction
Death in the Clouds (aka Death in the Air) by Agatha Christie - the key event takes place on an airplane
Airport by Arthur Hailey - 1960s bestseller, mostly takes place on the ground
Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - commercial aviation in South America
Nonfiction
The Wright Brothers by Fred C. Kelly - a friend of the Wrights
North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh - she was a pioneer pilot
West with the Night by Beryl Markham - another pioneer pilot

What are your favorite books that are about modes of transportation? What do you plan to read?

Don't forget to update the wiki!

Yay, I have The Great Railway Bazaar on the shelf.

I found Passage to Juneau in my charity bookstore before the great lockdown, seems like a good time to read it. So many great suggestions, thanks!

I am going to read Narrow Margins by Marie Browne, which is about travelling on a narrowboat on the English canals. I got it as a Bookbub freebie a couple of years ago. If I have time (I probably won't, I have so many books lined up for different challenges in May!) I'll also try and get to Midnight in Siberia by David Greene, about a trip on the Trans-Siberian railway.

I haven't taken time to look through my options, but I am looking forward to "virtual" travel this month!

I am thinking of Murder on the Orient Express, which is one of my faves.

There is also an Elizabeth Peters book Night Train to Memphis.

Now here's an interesting looking one:
Grounded / Seth Stevenson

"Stevenson winds his way around the world by biking, walking, hiking, riding in rickshaws, freight ships, cruise ships, ancient ferries, buses, and the Trans-Siberian Railway-but never gets on an airplane."

I am very impressed with your comprehensive list. Thank you for the connection to the open library- as I isolate in the boonies, that will come in helpful. While reading your list I was reminded of Death on the Nile- I had promised myself I would read it after having seen the famous boat while I was on a Nile Cruise a couple of years ago. And I must read it before Kenneth Branagh's movie with a screenplay by Michael Green, is released this year.

This past winter before the travel lock down I was fortunate enough to have a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti in Kenya. I thoroughly enjoyed that mode of transportation- so quiet, so peaceful and so thrilling. So my vow is to finally get around to reading Around the World in Eighty Days & Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne.

Your list doesn't subdivide automobiles, but I would suggest a sub topic of School bus. I think all of our travels- both literally and literary, have the power to enlighten and entertain. I found The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal
by Jonathan Mooney uncomfortably enlightening.

>8 HelenGress: Buses and balloons! Two modes I didn't think of. There are a couple of public bus books on the LT list of best public-transport fiction, linked above, but no school buses. Glad to have a schoolbus book!

I'm considering reading Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945, which is about the automobile creating new forms of lodging.

Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 by Warren James Belasco focuses on birth of the motel but more broadly examines the development of the American driving vacation in the early 20th century. It is a good fit for this month's TravelKIT, Modes of Transportation, since it has an entire chapter devoted to why leisure travel by car was preferred by many Americans over leisure travel by railroad. Hotels in the early 20th century were also pretty unpleasant, which further spurred car camping. By the early 1920s it was a full-on thing. Interestingly, car camping up to this point was pretty routinely done by the side of the road. This of course caused its own problems, which led to municipalities opening free tourist camps in the center of town. The free part didn't work out so well, leading to fee-based camping. From there the private sector got involved. By this point many realized that they didn't care so much for the fad of camping, so they quickly took advantage of cabins. From primitive shelters, cabins gradually developed to the full-blown motel.

When I was a kid in the 70s, my family always took a driving vacation in the summer, and we camped. So reading the early history of this from of family recreation was very interesting for me. While the book is academic, in that it's fully sourced and has a bibliographic essay, the writer keeps the theorizing to a minimum and includes many interesting quotations, some of which are from 1910s accounts of cross-country motor trips. I would love to read one of these. A couple that seemed promising are By Motor to the Golden Gate by Emily Post (yes, *that* Emily Post) and Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway by Effie Price Gladding.

I didn't read it with the intention of posted it for this group, but it's just occurred to me that it sorta fits. Out of the Silence: After the Crash is by one of the Uruguayan survivors of the Andes plane crash of 1972.

June thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/320295

Better late than never - I just finished Marie Browne's Narrow Margins, a memoir about the author and her family's first couple of years living on a narrowboat.