When you are over the world for hours on end, or aboard a train speeding across a continent?  Or sitting poolside at your hotel or a white sandy beach what are some of your favorite books that will take you away from all that surrounds you and for a while you escape everything.  If you are looking for something different here are my five favorite summer travel books

1. The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner – if there is one book every traveler should read it must be this one.  ‘What is the happiest place in the world?’ is the question Eric Weiner asks and he sets out to find the answer.  From the richest to the poorest countries and everything in between his simple question to the people he meets along the way is how do you find happiness living here?  How many times have you asked that of a people in any given country, how many times have we asked it of ourselves.
2. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride – curiosity is what convinced me to buy this book, a black man being raised by a white mother.  I am so glad my curiosity got the best of me that day it tells the story of Ruth McBride a Jewish lady from Poland that married a black man and tells of the pains, anguish and joy she endured being a white woman raising twelve children in Harlem 1942.
3. Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom – is there one person in your life that taught you more than you ever thought possible (and I am not talking about a relative). Who’s that one person that made such an impression on your life that changed it forever?  Someone who changed your life as there’s was ending?  And I am not talking about a relative.  Or do you know someone suffering from ALS?  Well this book is about both of them, a teacher dying of ALS and the student whom’s life he changed forever and every Tuesday they’d spend together and all the lessons this young man learns from Morrie.  It’s about affection and gratitude for the one person that was our true mentor that helped us become the person we are today.  
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – when the musical premiered in Boston I knew nothing about the story, the show had won a multitude of Tony Awards so I bought a ticket and went to see it, the very next day I bought the book, it is a true epic saga of social injustice and the struggle for redemption.  It follows an ex-convict after his release from prison while trying to live an honest life he’s being pursued by a ruthless and unforgiving police man in 19th century France.
5. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee –  Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the Depression-era South where he defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge and teaches his own children about racism and explores the roots of human behavior our innocence, kindness and even cruelty.  What is that makes us love, hate and even laugh?[supsystic-gallery id=237 position=center] 

I would love to know some of your favorite books and always welcome a recommendation or two when I want to escape the world for a while with a good book.  I’d also love to know if you have read any books on my list and as always thanks for reading – AGF