Reading on Tour

Having been staunchly against the idea of e-readers, for a multitude of reasons, we have both caved in for this trip and bought Kindles, as carrying several kilos of books around is not really a viable option! The one big advantage we can see is the opportunity to download lots of classics for free, although not many we can think of relate to Africa. We would like to have some books that relate to the countries we are passing through, to help us understand better the communities and landscape we are passing through - however, it is a bit of an unknown how much energy we will have at the end of each day to read, so it is a concern we might start a book on Egypt in Cairo and still be reading it by the time we get to Kenya!  So, we’re looking to do some crowd sourcing for suggestions.  Please let us know any recommendations - some books about cycling would probably also be good, as well as just some good reads.

Ali’s list so far is:

Paul Theroux – Dark Star Safari, Karen Blixen  - Out of Africa, Dave Eggers – What is the What, John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany, Ned Boulting – How I Won the Yellow Jumper, Put Me Back on My Bike: In Search of Tom Simpson, Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn, Jack Kerouac - On the Road, Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe 

Lizzie’s list:

Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene, Barbara Ehrenreich - Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passion of War, John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath, Martin Amis - London Fields, Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall, Arthur Conan Doyle – The Memories of Sherlock Holmes, Michel De Montaigne- On Friendship, Ewart Scott Grogan - From the Cape to Cairo; The First Traverse of Africa from South to North , Alastair Humphreys - Moods of Future Joys - Around the World by Bike