Travel Book Reviews & Site News

Our robot monkey army has been working hard behind the scenes to improve our site. As most of our customers prefer to checkout without creating an account, we've decided to remove user accounts altogether.

This means no more passwords, logins, catchpas and all that annoying inter-gunk. Yay! This allows us to simplify the checkout process, and also reduces our administration and server load which helps us keep our prices down.

Apologies to any folks who like having an account and using the wishlist thingy. Somehow we'll find a way to blame it on the government.

True stories by Peter Hessler, Gretel Ehrlich, Mark Salzman, Tim Ward, Stephanie Elizondo, Zhang Zianliang, John Krich and many more...

For our upcoming trip  we're reading everything to do with China. One of the first travel books we picked off the shelf to read was Red Dust by Ma Jian. This book has been referenced in other travel books we've read and has been a popular, steady seller over the years.

A warm, funny and informative look at life in Singapore by an English expat.

A finely crafted travel memoir and exploration of Manga and Japanese culture by one of Australia's finest novelists.

An amazing collection of interviews from citizens of the former East Germany.

Ben Gilmour travels to Pakistan to make a film illegally in the remote and very dangerous wild west of Pakistan. An incredible book, one of my all-time favourite books of any genre.

Antarctica on a Plate is a great travel and foodie book, one of my favourites. Author Alexa Thomson takes the plunge to be the cook for a camp in Antarctica. 

In Snake Fang Salad photographer Greg Elms travels China photographing food for Lonely Planet. As an obsessed food blogger and travel nerd this is my dream job, or so I thought...

Mai Pen Rai is a wonderful memoir of author Carol Hollinger's expat life in Bangkok in the 1960's. A travel classic.

Sleeping with the Dead chronicles Marko Cunningham's work with Ruamkatanyu, a volunteer paramedic\ambulence\rescue organisation in Bangkok, Thailand.

A joyous book of travel, cycling, art, music and everything from David Byrne of Talking Heads fame.

Untangling My Chopsticks is a memoir of Victoria Abbott Riccardi's year in Kyoto, Japan, mostly to learn about Japanese food, and in particular, Kyoto's chakaiseki (tea kaiseki) cuisine, a series of small dishes that accompany tea ceremonies. Some refer to kaiseki as the Japanese equivalent to French degustation. 

I became an instant Joe Bennett fan just a a few pages into Where Underpants Come From. A charming and funny read of Joe's quest to trace his $NZ 8.59 pack of underpants from the store to the source.

Emergency Sex follows the intertwining stories of three UN\Red Cross workers in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Somolia, Haiti and Liberia.

This travel\true crime book is a jaw-droppingly amazing read, the true story of an English inmate inside the bizzare San Pedro Prison in Bolivia, South America.

A highly personal account of author Peter Olszewski's stint working for the Myanmar Times in Yangon. It made me want to go to Burma.

Brian Thacker is one of the funniest travel writers around. Rule No 5 is one of my favourite travel books for a good giggle, in this book he spins yarns from his two years of leading Contiki style bus tours across Europe.

In Do Travel Writers Go To Hell, author Thomas Kohnstamm throws in his steady, boring, well-paying office job and Manhattan lifestyle to be a Lonely Planet travel guide writer, updating the book for Brazil.

Just who are those smiley little folks at the top of our homepage?

A fantastic travel & biology book on New Guinea, a modern travel classic.

A rock'n'roll tour of North America in the age of terror. A cracking read by the Midnight Oil drummer.

Factory Girls is a fascinating book on the women who work in the factories in the industrial machine that is modern China.

A great memoir by an Australian Hong Kong expatriate, down to earth and honest.

One of my favourite travel books, the author tells of his time running bus tours in Europe in the 1970s, eventually leading to the creation of Flight Centre.

Very Thai is our favourite book on Thailand Popular culture, a wonderful snapshot in time.

An absolute classic Bali travel book, a wonderful look at how Bali was before us Aussies did our best to trash the place :-)

Quite an interesting and quirky travel book, just the way we like it. Bali Blues gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Kuta and the effects of the Bali Bombings on the local population.http://www.usedtravelbooks.com.au/bali-blues-by-jeremy-allan.html