Book Inspirations for Making a Big Life Change

While dreaming and thinking about this trip, I read dozens of books about other people making big life changes. These books are inspirational, thought-provoking and entertaining!

If you want your own kick-in-the-butt to get a life change in the works, then buy a couple of these books:

(These are almost entirely true stories. Ordered by my favorites first!)

• Monkeys on the Road – Mary Hollendoner – I can’t believe I can now add my own book to this list, several years later! Family drives from California to Argentina over 3+ years in a camper van with 6-year-old daughter. Full of heartwarming personal encounters, breathtaking wilderness campsites, and occasionally terrifying situations. Read the first few chapters for free at the “look inside” on Amazon HERE. 
• West with the Night – Beryl Markham – European girl grows up in Africa and becomes a pilot. Favorite quote: “A life has to move or it stagnates… Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday” – this is definitely how I feel!
• Tales of a Female Nomad – Rita Golden Gelman – older woman solo traveling around the world, making friends everywhere she goes.  Loved this one!
• Wide-eyed wanderers – Richard Ligato – US couple quits jobs in San Siego and drives thru central & s. America.  Some great life-change quotes: “What if we won the lottery?” and he imagines himself puttering around on dirt roads in mexico… then realizes he doesn’t have to win the lottery to do that!  Or they start talking about what they’re going to do, but then “the sitcom theme music began and our attention was drawn to the TV and we settled back into our comfortable numbness” – powerful!  Also great intro chapter on if he’s crazy to throw away the safety & good lives they lead.
• Global Mom – Melissa Dalton-Bradford – American family moves to Norway for some years, then to France, then to Germany, Singapore, Switzerland.  Really interesting read about difference in lifestyles in each of these countries – language, food, clothes, school. Great book! (Warning: very sad part, you will cry).
• Mother Tongue – Christine Gilbert – woman obsesses about learning 3 new languages with her infant son; they move to China, Beirut, Mexico, and ultimately settle down in Spain.  I loved the personal story plus the detail about language research!
• The Dirty Life – Kristin Kimball – woman quits her New York city job to go start a farm with new boyfriend in VT.  Great.
• The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the secrets of the world’s happiest country – Helen Russell – woman from London moves to Denmark and writes about the surprising differences and what makes Danish people so happy.
• Wide-open world – John Marshall – family spends one month each in 10 (?) different countries volunteering – his kids are teenagers.
• Chickens, Mules & 2 old fools – Victoria Twead – retired English couple buy a run-down property in a tiny village in Spain
• My Grape Escape – Laura Bradbury – young woman backs out of law school to buy a run-down property in France with her French husband.  
• Drive, Nacho, Drive – Brad & Sheena Van Orden – couple drives from US to Argentina (first book I read in this genre! easy, fun read)
• 360 degrees longitude – John Higham – family of 4 set out to bike around the world but daughter breaks her leg and they go on public transport instead
• Around the world in 10 years – Pablo Rey – Spanish couple quits jobs and drives off through eastern europe.
• Beyond the sky & the earth – Jamie Zeppa – girls quits grad school to go teach in Bhutan for 2 years.
• Bumfuzzle – Patrick Schulte – couple quit their NY jobs and buy a sailboat after only taking one lesson, then sail around the world!  (Subsequently, they’ve had 2 kids and are driving around the world, I follow their blog “Bumfuzzle”)
• Around the world in 80 days – Michael Palin – he follows the original story of Phileas Fogg. Not very adventurous because he has a whole team with him. 
• 927 days of summer – Brad & Sheena Van Orden – they continue from Malaysia to France.  
• Happier than a Billionaire (plus sequel) – Nadine Hays Pisani – couple quit their jobs in the US to go live in Costa Rica & build a house. 
• Don’t sleep, there are snakes – Daniel Everett – missionary goes to live with the Piranha tribe in the Brazilian Amazon and learns their language.
• Call the Nurse: True stories of a country nurse on a Scottish Isle – Mary Macleod – woman decides to escape the stress and noise of big city life in London, and moves to a remote island to work as a nurse.
• Atrapa tu sueño – Herman & Candelaria Zapp – (in Spanish) Argentine couple drive from Argentina to Alaska in an ancient car. They’re still traveling many years later, now with kids in tow, in the same tiny vehicle! Bit long-winded but it was a good spanish practice read for me.
• The Third Wave – Alison Thompson – young woman leaves NY to go help in Indonesia after the tsunami, ends up living there for over a year
• Excess Baggage: One Family’s Around-the-World search for balance – Tracey Carisch – US family sells everything to go travel for 18 months
• At home in the world – Tsh Oxenreider – US family travels around the world – more introspective, finding herself, meditation, less adventurous style of travel memoir
• Nowhere like home – Jamie Alexander – young Englishman backpacks around Asia
• Our life off the grid – David Cox – older couple move to a remote island in Canada – lots of interesting tales of the difficulties of life in the new location, but they seem to love every minute of it. (Slightly long-winded, I skimmed a bit through the second half of the book)
• We will be free – Graeme Robert Bell – south african family drive the circumference of S. America. Interesting story and they are still overlanding to date. (But don’t read if you’re bothered by typos and bad grammar!)
• The Unsettlers – Mark Sundeen – written about different families changing their lives, the first was most interesting to me – young pregnant couple bike to remote land to live off the grid, but rest was a little boring.

The following aren’t entirely life change books, but big life-changing adventures – inspiring!

• Be Brave, be strong – Jill Homer – woman gets dumped by boyfriend and does a ridiculously hard mtn bike race across the continental divide (canada to mexico).  
• Maiden Voyage – Tania Aebi – 18-year-old girl sails around the world, alone!
• Wild – Cheryl Strayed – woman with drug & family problems hikes the PCT solo.  
• Inside: One woman’s journey through the inside passage – Susan Marie Conrad – woman kayaks solo over a thousand miles through icy waters along Alaska & Canada
• Love with a chance of drowning – Torre DeRoche – woman goes on round-the-world sailing trip with man she’s just met
• Walking to Listen: 4000 miles across America, one story at a time – Andrew Forsthoefel – young man walks across the US
• The Cyclist who went out in the cold – Tim Moore – man bikes along the Iron Curtain (eastern europe) – very funny and entertaining and informative read!
• Road Fever – Tim Cahill – 2 guys drive the same drive that we’re doing, but in 23 days!! (Argentina to Alaska) Crazy! 
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce – fictional story of an old man who walks across England to visit a dying old friend, a good read, thoughtful about life

And not life change books, but really interesting reads about different lifestyles:

• Child of the Jungle – Sabine Kuegler – girl grows up in the remote jungle of Papua New Guinea, then at age 17 is sent to a Swiss boarding school – wow contrast!
• Wild Life: Dispatches from a childhood of baboons and button-downs – Keena Roberts – girl goes back and forth every year of her youth between remote jungle in Botswana and a wealthy suburb in the US. Fun to read about the crazy experiences living with wildlife in the jungle in Botswana, and interesting to hear her comparisons with the “normal” life in the US. 

(And HERE is my life of country-specific books I read about each of the countries we’ve traveled through so far on our journey – true stories, historical fiction, documentary, fiction – all educational and entertaining)