24 Best Personal Memoirs, Travel Books
Personal Memoirs, Travel is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Personal Memoirs, Travel audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 24 Personal Memoirs, Travel audiobooks below.
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Nala’s World
- By: Dean Nicholson
- Narrator: Angus King
- Length: 8 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 29, 2020
- Language: English
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4.4(3390 ratings)
4.4(3390 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDDiscover the heartwarming true story of a life-changing friendship between a man and his rescue cat, Nala, as they adventure together on a bike journey around the world — from the Instagram phenomenon @1bike1world. When 30-year-old DeanDiscover the heartwarming true story of a life-changing friendship between a man and his rescue cat, Nala, as they adventure together on a bike journey around the world — from the Instagram phenomenon @1bike1world.
When 30-year-old Dean Nicholson set off from Scotland to cycle around the world, his aim was to learn as much as he could about our troubled planet. But he hadn’t bargained on the lessons he’d learn from his unlikely companion.... Read moreThree months after leaving home, on a remote road in the mountains between Montenegro and Bosnia, he came across an abandoned kitten. Something about the piercing eyes and plaintive meowing of the bedraggled little cat proved irresistible. He couldn’t leave her to her fate, so he put her on his bike and then, with the help of local vets, nursed her back to health.
Soon on his travels with the cat he named Nala, they forged an unbreakable bond — both curious, independent, resilient and adventurous. The video of how they met has had 20 million views and their Instagram has grown to almost 750k followers — and still counting!
Experiencing the kindness of strangers, visiting refugee camps, rescuing animals through Europe and Asia, Dean and Nala have already learned that the unexpected can be pretty amazing. Together with Garry Jenkins, writer with James Bowen of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob, Dean shares the extraordinary tale of his and Nala’s inspiring and heart-warming adventure together.
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Baggage
- By: Jeremy Hance
- Length: 11 hours 32 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: October 06, 2020
- Language: English
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4.24(77 ratings)
4.24(77 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDAn award-winning journalist’s eco-adventures across the globe with his three traveling companions: his fiancee, his OCD, and his chronic anxiety–a hilarious, wild jaunt that will inspire travelers, environmentalists, and anyone withAn award-winning journalist’s eco-adventures across the globe with his three traveling companions: his fiancee, his OCD, and his chronic anxiety–a hilarious, wild jaunt that will inspire travelers, environmentalists, and anyone with mental illness.
Most travel narratives are written by superb travelers: people who crave adventure, laugh in the face of danger, and rapidly integrate into foreign cultures. But what about someone who is paranoid about traveler’s diarrhea, incapable of speaking a foreign tongue, and hates not only flying but driving, cycling, motor-biking, and sometimes walking in the full sun?
In Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac, award-winning writer Jeremy Hance chronicles his hilarious and inspiring adventures as he reconciles his traveling career as an environmental journalist with his severe OCD and anxiety.
At the age of twenty-six–after months of visiting doctors, convinced he was dying from whatever disease his brain dreamed up the night before–Hance was diagnosed with OCD. The good news was that he wasn’t dying; the bad news was that OCD made him a really bad traveler–sometimes just making it to baggage claim was a win.
Yet Hance hauls his baggage from the airport and beyond. He takes readers on an armchair trek to some of the most remote corners of the world, from Kenya, where hippos clip the grass and baboons steal film, to Borneo, where macaques raid balconies and the last male Bornean rhino sings, to Guyana, where bats dive-bomb his head as he eats dinner with his partner and flesh-eating ants hide in their pants and their drunk guide leaves them stranded in the rainforest canopy.
As he and his partner soldier through the highs and the lows–of altitudes and their relationship–Hance discovers the importance of resilience, the many ways to manage (or not!) mental illness when in stressful situations, how nature can improve your mental health, and why it is so important to push yourself to live a life packed with experiences, even if you struggle daily with a mental health issue.
With mental illness impacting the lives of millions of people, this timely book will inspire people to step out of their comfort zones and take the road meant to be traveled. Hance proves that we all have baggage–the question is, do we leave it dusty in a closet or do we take it out in full view for others to see?
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Following Atticus
- By: Tom Ryan
- Narrator: Tom Ryan
- Length: 9 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 20, 2011
- Language: English
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4.15(6766 ratings)
4.15(6766 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDFollowing Atticus is the remarkable true story of a man and a dog embarking on the challenge of a lifetime. This is author Tom Ryan’s inspiring tale of how he and his miniature schnauzer companion, the “Little Buddha” Atticus M.Following Atticus is the remarkable true story of a man and a dog embarking on the challenge of a lifetime. This is author Tom Ryan’s inspiring tale of how he and his miniature schnauzer companion, the “Little Buddha” Atticus M. Finch, attempted to scale all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four thousand foot White Mountains twice in the dead of winter. It is a story of love, loss, and the resilience of the human and animal spirit that’s as thrilling as Into Thin Air and featuring the most endearing and unforgettable canine protagonist since Marley and Me.
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Mud, Rocks, Blazes
- By: Heather Anderson
- Narrator: Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 7 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.1(988 ratings)
4.1(988 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDFollowing her bestselling memoir, Thirst, here is the next step in Heather “Anish” Anderson’s adventurous life journey–one of deep emotion and self-discovery Despite her success setting a self-supported Fastest Known TimeFollowing her bestselling memoir, Thirst, here is the next step in Heather “Anish” Anderson’s adventurous life journey–one of deep emotion and self-discovery
Despite her success setting a self-supported Fastest Known Time record on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2013, Heather “Anish” Anderson still had such deep-seated insecurities that she became convinced her feat had been a fluke. So two years later she set out again, this time hiking through mud, rocks, and mountain blazes to crush her constant self-doubt and seek the true source of her strength and purpose.
The 2,189 miles of the Appalachian Trail, from Maine to Georgia, did not make it easy. Anderson struggled with its infamous rain, humidity, insects, and steep grades for fifty-four days. But because she had to fight for every step, she knew when she reached the summit of Springer Mountain, the AT’s southern terminus, that she had fully earned the trail. Of greater value, she learned to love herself and her body, and to feel the depth of her power. Examining emotional scars as well as her relationship with her mother, Anderson’s deeply internal yet highly physical journey in Mud, Rocks, Blazes is an essential story.
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Coming Together, Coming Apart
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrator: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 10 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: May 26, 2020
- Language: English
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3.98(58 ratings)
3.98(58 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDWhen Daniel Gordis, his wife, Elisheva, and their three young children abandoned a safe and comfortable home in Los Angeles to move halfway around the world and find a new life in Israel, the future looked bright. It was 1998, Ehud Barak had justWhen Daniel Gordis, his wife, Elisheva, and their three young children abandoned a safe and comfortable home in Los Angeles to move halfway around the world and find a new life in Israel, the future looked bright. It was 1998, Ehud Barak had just been elected prime minister, and peace appeared to be only a few tough negotiations away. Two years later, hope had turned to terror, as the rattle of machine-gun fire perforated the night and the frightened, exhausted children clung desperately to their stuffed animals in fitful sleep, dreaming perhaps of the quiet, peaceful world they had left behind. In Coming Together, Coming Apart, Gordis tells a timely, relevant, and deeply personal tale that lays bare the complex problems of the seemingly intractable and often incomprehensible Israeli-Palestinian conflict, revealing how much is at stake and underscoring the toll the struggle takes on every human being it touches.
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Coasting
- By: Jonathan Raban
- Narrator: James Langton
- Length: 11 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.98(409 ratings)
3.98(409 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDPut Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, two-thousand-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, thePut Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, two-thousand-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage–which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982–into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.
Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can read Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always reads it with pleasure.
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From Scratch
- By: Tembi Locke
- Narrator: Tembi Locke
- Length: 20 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.95(28413 ratings)
3.95(28413 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDA 2020 Audie Award Finalist One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019!Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana! This Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller is “a captivating story of love lost andA 2020 Audie Award Finalist
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One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019!
Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana!
This Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller is “a captivating story of love lost and found” (Kirkus Reviews) set in the lush Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hours.
It was love at first sight when actress Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of his marrying a black American woman. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forged on. They built a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, deep friendships, and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopted at birth. Eventually, they reconciled with Saro’s family just as he faced a formidable cancer that would consume all their dreams.
From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Where once Tembi was estranged from Saro’s family, now she finds solace and nourishment–literally and spiritually–at her mother-in-law’s table. In the Sicilian countryside, she discovers the healing gifts of simple fresh food, the embrace of a close knit community, and timeless traditions and wisdom that light a path forward. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro’s romance–an incredible love story that leaps off the pages.
In Sicily, it is said that every story begins with a marriage or a death–in Tembi Locke’s case, it is both. “Locke’s raw and heartfelt memoir will uplift readers suffering from the loss of their own loved ones” (Publishers Weekly), but her story is also about love, finding a home, and chasing flavor as an act of remembrance. From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and those who needed a powerful reminder that life is…delicious. -
Run the World
- By: Becky Wade
- Narrator: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 8 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: July 05, 2016
- Language: English
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3.92(1109 ratings)
3.92(1109 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDFrom elite marathoner and Olympic hopeful Becky Wade comes the story of her year-long exploration of diverse global running communities from England to Ethiopia–9 countries, 72 host families, and over 3,500 miles of running–investigatingFrom elite marathoner and Olympic hopeful Becky Wade comes the story of her year-long exploration of diverse global running communities from England to Ethiopia–9 countries, 72 host families, and over 3,500 miles of running–investigating unique cultural approaches to the sport and revealing the secrets to the success of runners all over the world.
Fresh off a successful collegiate running career–with multiple NCAA All-American honors and two Olympic Trials qualifying marks to her name–Becky Wade was no stranger to international competition. But after years spent safely sticking to the training methods she knew, Becky was curious about how her counterparts in other countries approached the sport to which she’d dedicated over half of her life. So in 2012, as a recipient of the Watson Fellowship, she packed four pairs of running shoes, cleared her schedule for the year, and took off on a journey to infiltrate diverse running communities around the world. What she encountered far exceeded her expectations and changed her outlook into the sport she loved.
Over the next twelve months–visiting 9 countries with unique and storied running histories, logging over 3,500 miles running over trails, tracks, sidewalks, and dirt roads–Becky explored the varied approaches of runners across the globe. Whether riding shotgun around the streets of London with Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt, climbing for an hour at daybreak to the top of Ethiopia’s Mount Entoto just to start her daily run, or getting lost jogging through the bustling streets of Tokyo, Becky’s unexpected adventures, keen insights, and landscape descriptions take the reader into the heartbeat of distance running around the world.
Upon her return to the United States, she incorporated elements of the training styles she’d sampled into her own program, and her competitive career skyrocketed. When she made her marathon debut in 2013, winning the race in a blazing 2:30, she became the third-fastest woman marathoner under the age of 25 in U.S. history, qualifying for the 2016 Olympic Trials and landing a professional sponsorship from Asics.
From the feel-based approach to running that she learned from the Kenyans, to the grueling uphill workouts she adopted from the Swiss, to the injury-recovery methods she learned from the Japanese, Becky shares the secrets to success from runners and coaches around the world. The story of one athlete’s fascinating journey, Run the World is also a call to change the way we approach the world’s most natural and inclusive sport.
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Four Seasons in Rome
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrator: Anthony Doerr
- Length: 6 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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3.92(9453 ratings)
3.92(9453 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDFrom the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land, a “dazzling” (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) memoir about art and adventures inFrom the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land, a “dazzling” (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) memoir about art and adventures in Rome.
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Anthony Doerr has received many awards–from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins.
Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr’s varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats–the chroniclers of Rome who came before him–and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.
This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer’s craft–the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences into sentences. -
Turn Right at Machu Picchu
- By: Mark Adams
- Narrator: Mark Adams
- Length: 10 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: May 18, 2012
- Language: English
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3.85(15002 ratings)
3.85(15002 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDWhat happens when an unadventurous adventure writer tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu? In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recastWhat happens when an unadventurous adventure writer tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu? In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth-except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. In fact, he’d never even slept in a tent. Turn Right at Machu Picchu is Adams’ fascinating and funny account of his journey through some of the world’s most majestic, historic, and remote landscapes guided only by a hard-as-nails Australian survivalist and one nagging question: Just what was Machu Picchu?
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That Summer in Sicily
- By: Marlena de Blasi
- Narrator: Marlena de Blasi
- Length: 8 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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3.85(1143 ratings)
3.85(1143 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDOne summer in Sicily, Marlena de Blasi entered a world of unforgettable magic when she discovered the secret Sicilian villa of Donnafugata. There, life was ruled by ritual and by an unassailable seventy-year-old matriarch and protectress,One summer in Sicily, Marlena de Blasi entered a world of unforgettable magic when she discovered the secret Sicilian villa of Donnafugata. There, life was ruled by ritual and by an unassailable seventy-year-old matriarch and protectress, Tosca.
Willowy and aloof, with an aura of a distant time, Tosca was a woman whose life story begged to be told. In the warmth of Tosca’s garden, Marlena would receive bountiful lessons of life and love as the story of Tosca’s fairy-tale romance with an Italian prince unfolded.
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Beyond the Castle
- By: Jody Jean Dreyer
- Length: 6 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publish date: September 05, 2017
- Language: English
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3.82(141 ratings)
3.82(141 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDWhen the credits roll and you’ve left the park, when your Disney day is over, how do you take the magic with you into your everyday work and life? Jody Jean Dreyer worked for the Walt Disney Company for 30 years and in Beyond the Castle sheWhen the credits roll and you’ve left the park, when your Disney day is over, how do you take the magic with you into your everyday work and life?
Jody Jean Dreyer worked for the Walt Disney Company for 30 years and in Beyond the Castle she shares one-of-a-kind stories and insights into what sets the Disney experience apart, as well as secrets to help readers discover their own “happily ever after.”
Beginning with her first position as a summer intern at Walt Disney World, through her role leading synergy and special projects for Disney (reporting to former CEO Michael Eisner), to her work with top leadership at Walt Disney Motion Pictures sharing the magic of Disney films around the world, Jody unpacks secrets that can change the way we understand ourselves, our work and relationships, and how we can find our own path to happiness. You will read her stories about working with Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, her front-line role in the opening of theme parks around the world and her own journey to discovering how to bring some Disney magic into every day.
The wish for happy endings is written in our hearts. Every park guest or movie watcher is looking for their own “happily ever after,” as they ask the questions: What’s my story? Does it matter? Will the story end well for me? Jody’s personal experiences and her underpinning faith help her to offer practical and sometimes unexpected principles to better appreciate and navigate our own stories.
Jody‚Äôs entertaining storytelling will satisfy a reader’s desire to open the doors and peek inside the castle ‚Äì and more, to unlock and illuminate life‚Äôs true treasure.
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Without Stopping
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrator: Tom Zahner
- Length: 14 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 13, 2022
- Language: English
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3.81(189 ratings)
3.81(189 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDPaul Bowles, the acclalmed author of The Shelterlng Sky, offers movlng, powerful, subtle, and fasclnatlng lnslghts lnto hls llfe, hls wrltlng, and hls world. -
Pancakes in Paris
- By: Craig Carlson
- Narrator: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.81(1527 ratings)
3.81(1527 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDParis was practically perfect–although for Craig Carlson one thing was still missing: the good ol’ American breakfast he loved so much. Craig was the last person anyone would have expected to open an American diner in Paris. He came fromParis was practically perfect–although for Craig Carlson one thing was still missing: the good ol’ American breakfast he loved so much.
Craig was the last person anyone would have expected to open an American diner in Paris. He came from humble beginnings in a working-class town in Connecticut, had never worked in a restaurant, and didn’t know anything about starting a brand-new business. But from his first visit to Paris, Craig knew he had found the city of his dreams.
Pancakes in Paris is the story of Craig tackling the impossible–from raising the money to fund his dream to tracking down international suppliers for “exotic” American ingredients, and even finding love along the way. His diner, Breakfast in America, is now a renowned tourist destination, and the story of how it came to be is just as delicious and satisfying as the classic breakfast that tops its menu.
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The Yellow Envelope
- By: Kim Dinan
- Narrator: Laurence Bouvard
- Length: 8 hours 48 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: April 01, 2017
- Language: English
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3.78(2270 ratings)
3.78(2270 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDAfter Kim and her husband, Brian, decide to quit their jobs to travel around the world, they’re given a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away. There are only three rules for the envelope: don’tAfter Kim and her husband, Brian, decide to quit their jobs to travel around the world, they’re given a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away. There are only three rules for the envelope: don’t overthink it, share your experiences, and don’t feel pressured to give it all away. Through Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, and beyond, Kim and Brian face obstacles, including major challenges to their relationship. As they distribute the money to people they encounter along the way, they learn that money does not have anything to do with the capacity to give but that it is the giving of ourselves that is transformational.
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The Passenger
- By: Chaney Kwak
- Narrator: Keong Sim
- Length: 3 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.72(615 ratings)
3.72(615 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDIn March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by fifty-foot swells and forty-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast inIn March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by fifty-foot swells and forty-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the suspenseful, harrowing, funny, touching story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.
Chaney Kwak is a travel writer used to all sorts of mishaps on the road, but this is a first even for him: trapped on the battered cruise ship, he stuffs his passport into his underwear just in case his body has to be identified. As the massive cruise ship sways in surging waves, Kwak holds on and watches news of the impending disaster unfold on Twitter, where the ship’s nearly 1,400 passengers are showered with “thoughts and prayers.” Kwak uses his twenty-seven hours aboard the teetering ship to examine his family history, maritime tragedies, and the failing relationship back on shore with a man he’s loved for nearly two decades: the Viking Sky, he realizes, may not be the only sinking ship he needs to escape.
The Passenger takes listeners on an unforgettable journey from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco. Kwak weaves his personal experience into events spanning decades and continents to explore the serendipity and the relationships that move us.
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Journeys Home
- By: Andrew McCarthy
- Narrator: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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3.72(82 ratings)
3.72(82 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDAddressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy’s featured storyAddressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy’s featured story recounts his quest to uncover his family’s Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection.
Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on journeying home, whether the authors are actively seeking long-lost relatives, meeting up with seldom-seen family members, or perhaps just visiting the old country to get a feel for their roots. A foreword by the Genographic Project’s Spencer Wells sets the scene.
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India: A Wounded Civilization
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrator: Sam Dastor
- Length: 6 hours 41 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.7(1338 ratings)
3.7(1338 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDIn 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency,” V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantlyIn 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency,” V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.
Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his own encounters with ordinary Indians–from a supercilious prince to an engineer constructing housing for Bombay’s homeless–Naipaul captures a vast, mysterious, and agonized continent inaccessible to foreigners and barely visible to its own people. He sees both the burgeoning space program and the five thousand volunteers chanting mantras to purify a defiled temple; the feudal village autocrat and the Naxalite revolutionaries who combined Maoist rhetoric with ritual murder. Relentless in its vision, thrilling in the keenness of its prose, India: A Wounded Civilization is a work of astonishing insight and candor.
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An Area of Darkness
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrator: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.68(1856 ratings)
3.68(1856 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDA classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from theA classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India.
Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.
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My Life in China and America
- By: Yung Wing
- Narrator: Brian Nishii
- Length: 5 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Public Domain
- Publish date: March 10, 2022
- Language: English
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3.62(48 ratings)
3.62(48 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.007.99 USDThis classic and integral memoir recounts the events in the life of the first Chinese student to graduate from a major American university, Yale College. An avid advocate for education, Yung Wing convinced the Qing Dynasty government to create aThis classic and integral memoir recounts the events in the life of the first Chinese student to graduate from a major American university, Yale College. An avid advocate for education, Yung Wing convinced the Qing Dynasty government to create a program that would send Chinese students to American schools in order to study science and engineering, giving them opportunities that would never be open to them if they stayed in China. Both enthralling and educational, this historic memoir from an incredibly important voice in history will take listeners back in time to the late nineteenth century.
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Roads to Quoz
- By: William Least Heat-Moon
- Narrator: William Least Heat-Moon
- Length: 21 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 29, 2008
- Language: English
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3.57(533 ratings)
3.57(533 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.98 USDAbout a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on anAbout a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on an American journey off the beaten path. Sticking to the small places via the small roads — those colored blue on maps — he uncovered a nation deep in character, story, and charm.... Read moreNow, for the first time since Blue Highways, Heat-Moon is back on the backroads. Roads to Quoz is his lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America.
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Carsick
- By: John Waters
- Narrator: John Waters
- Length: 8 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: June 03, 2014
- Language: English
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3.49(6976 ratings)
3.49(6976 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDCarsick is the New York Times bestselling chronicle of a cross-country hitchhiking journey with America’s most beloved weirdo.John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that readsCarsick is the New York Times bestselling chronicle of a cross-country hitchhiking journey with America’s most beloved weirdo.
John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads “I’m Not Psycho,” he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker’s unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette.
Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion–and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.
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The Book of Eating
- By: Adam Platt
- Narrator: Adam Platt
- Length: 8 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: November 12, 2019
- Language: English
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3.38(267 ratings)
3.38(267 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDA wildly hilarious and irreverent memoir of a globe-trotting life lived meal-to-meal by one of our most influential and respected food critics. As the son of a diplomat growing up in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, Adam Platt didn’tA wildly hilarious and irreverent memoir of a globe-trotting life lived meal-to-meal by one of our most influential and respected food critics.
As the son of a diplomat growing up in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, Adam Platt didn’t have the chance to become a picky eater. Living, traveling, and eating in some of the most far-flung locations around the world, he developed an eclectic palate and a nuanced understanding of cultures and cuisines that led to some revelations which would prove important in his future career as a food critic. In Tokyo, for instance–“a kind of paradise for nose-to-tail cooking”–he learned that “if you’re interested in telling a story, a hair-raisingly bad meal is much better than a good one.”
From dim sum in Hong Kong to giant platters of Peking duck in Beijing, fresh-baked croissants in Paris and pierogi on the snowy streets of Moscow, Platt takes us around the world, re-tracing the steps of a unique, and lifelong, culinary education. Providing a glimpse into a life that has intertwined food and travel in exciting and unexpected ways, The Book of Eating is a delightful and sumptuous trip that is also the culinary coming-of-age of a voracious eater and his eventual ascension to become, as he puts it, “a professional glutton.”
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Khabaar
- By: Madhushree Ghosh
- Narrator: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDKhabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions what it means to belong andKhabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions what it means to belong and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country? These questions are integral to the author’s own immigrant journey to America as a daughter of Indian refugees (from what’s now Bangladesh to India during the 1947 Partition of India); as a woman of color in science; as a woman who left an abusive marriage; and as a woman who keeps her parents’ memory alive through her Bengali food.
... Read more
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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