My family is one of the most important things in my life. We by no means are perfect, no family is, but I love them so fiercely I anxiously await the times I get to see them. Nowadays I only get to see them around holidays and breaks from school. During these times that I see them we love to spend our time together by traveling. Some of my favorite places we have been together are Chicago, IL., Seaside, OR., Vancouver, CA. and Grand Cayman, BVI. These trips have all been incredibly important and so much fun to relive through pictures and memories. On these trips I am known to take books with me to read while I kick back and relax. Here are some of my favorite picks to travel with from the warm beaches of the Florida Keys to the stunning streets of Paris that hopefully you can add to your travel book lists once we are all able to travel like we did before the start of the pandemic.

Also that photo was taken in Barcelona by a 1920's camera in front of the Arc de Triomfe and it's now my most used book mark and I literally treat it like it's made of glass.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan​The excess of wealth in these novels make it the perfect companion for a read while traipsing the streets of a big city. I listened to this audio book while I was studying abroad in Barcelona and when I was traveling through Paris to get there. It was a great companion on metros and buses. 

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I read this one while staying at the beach in Seaside, Oregon. Capote is a genius and capitalized on a genre that I don’t think he realized would morph into crime podcasts and television networks that follow these stories. This book still to this day shakes me to my core, but it was a great combination for a spooky novel with the hazy mist of the cool beaches of the Pacific Northwest.

The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan
I read this bad boy on a vacation to my grandparents lake house and it’s a quick read, but I reread it all the time. It’s the perfect book for a weekend getaway because it’s a quick and fun story.

Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick
My favorite way to read biographies is listening to the audiobook. This one I listened to while on Spring Break with my best friends in my sophomore year of college and Kendrick had me feeling all the fun vibes that were perfect for a girls trip.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
I know the classics are sometimes thrown into everyone's faces, but I wouldn’t recommend one if I didn’t mean it. Great Expectations is an amazing coming of age story and I promise you it is easier to read when you choose to read it than when your year 10 English teacher tells you that you have to read it. Plus reading a classic novel about old London and Kent by a beach and a pool is a great way to appreciate the nuances. On a family vacation to the Florida Keys I read this wonderful novel.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I spent three weeks traveling during my senior year of high school. It was a crazy travel trip starting in New York City then to Disney World, Steamboat, Phoenix and ending in Seattle. I took to all corners of the country basically and at the time I was reading this book for my AP Literature class. This book is probably one of my favorite books of all time and I attempt to convince every person I meet that they should read it. This internal struggle of a novel is a great read for extended travel to help get through it.
 
Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas
Okay so this one requires a little more preparation in order to read and travel with this bad boy but I did read it while on a trip to the Florida Keys with my family and ended up reading a chapter that made me cry and ugly cried in the car while driving to the airport in front of my dad. Needless to say I did love reading it while on vacation so that I could completely immerse myself into the storyline and read the book in two days.

Single State of Mind by Andi Dorfman
The former Bachelorette talks of her big move to the big apple following her less than happy ending after her interluding with the Bachelor Nation. I read this bad boy while riding the train into Vancouver (which is what I will self proclaim as a NYC of Canada). I fell madly in love with Vancouver and vowed to myself to live there in my future so stay tuned. It was great to read about someone adjusting to moving to a big city when I myself was traversing a new city in a country I had never visited before. 

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
I didn’t read this one while traveling in that we were in COVID lockdowns, but it was a great read to help you feel like you were traveling and I imagine it would be a nice read when visiting the UK.

Normal People by Sally Rooney
A short quick read that’s perfect for traveling and also has a dark academia vibe since our main characters actually attend Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. I deeply wish I could say that I read this while I was in Dublin and visiting a friend at Trinity, but I cannot say that is the truth. I am guilty of reading it by a beach, but it is surely suited for city travel as well. The sometimes dark concepts that Normal People dives into perfectly pairs with the cold, rainy days in Ireland during late fall. ​

My mom and I used to read together every night before I went to bed. My most vivid memory of this time was reading Junie B. Jones First Grader Boo...and I Mean It . I can't remember what was so funny about the book, but there was one chapter that we laughed about for almost an hour and we still laugh about today. Yes you read that right we don't even remember what was funny, but we still laugh about how much it made us laugh. We have kept that memory for almost two decades now and that is why I love reading with my mom. Throughout the years we have read a lot of books together, so here are 10 books that you just have to read together.
*all synopses from goodreads.com