Introducing Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe
This article will cover 15 of the best books to read before traveling to Europe. I have taken different books representing different countries. This is an essential list for further experience the countries you will be visiting while traveling to Europe.
This is the beauty of books. Books can transport you almost anywhere on the globe without having to pack anything.One paperback can hold an entire universe and is waiting for you!
This mix of contemporary and classic books will help you find the correct country for you, even if you aren't sure where to go. Let these literary recommendations guide you.
It's time to plan your 2022 summer travel plans. You can read during your trip, regardless of whether you plan to travel solo across Europe or if you are looking for delicious food and a life-altering spiritual experience in Asia.
These are the seven books you need to read before traveling to Europe. They are all written from the perspective of a native and will help to understand the culture through their eyes. Prepare for a new wave in literary travel.
List of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe
- Burial Rites by Hannah Kent - Iceland
- Â One of Us by Asne Seierstad - Norway
- Â The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson - Sweden
- Gone Viking by Helen Russell - Denmark
- The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit – England
- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon – Scotland
- The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor – Ireland
- Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky – France
- Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe – Belgium
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – Germany
- Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner - Switzerland
- When Nietzche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom – Austria
- The Trial by Franz Kafka – Czech
- The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer – Hungary
- Summer at The Lake by Erica James – Italy
#15 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Europe: Iceland
The stark beauty of Northern Iceland's landscape, with its windswept grass, craggy mountain peaks, and unpredictable skies, Burial Rite documents Agnes Magnusdottir's last few months of her life. The novel's language, like the setting, is vivid, poetic, and breathtaking. Hannah Kent's
Iceland is alive and breathing. Autumn "falling on the valley like a gasp,†and Winters violently shapes its inhabitants’ lives.
This dark tale is told in dimly lit rooms with brooding characters like Fridrik Sigurdsson or Natan Ketilsson. In nineteenth-century Ireland, death is a common theme. This includes the need to kill deliberately and human deaths from cold, starvation, or disease. Execution or murder is another way to end this earthly life.
This is the reason why this is book is #15 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#14 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: One of Us By Asne Seierstad
Europe: Norway
One Of Us opens with a young girl running for her life. On the small Norwegian island Utoya, a young man dressed in a police uniform stalks and hunts her and her friends. They lie in the woods pretending to be dead, hoping the man will notice them and then move on. He doesn't. He executexecutes style shoots the girl in her head and hits her friends. The man continues his search for new victims. The nation of Norway struggles to move forward almost four years after the July day in which 77 people, including many children, were murdered in cold blood.
Anders Breivik was a Norwegian terrorist from Norway who stunned the world in 2011 with his massacres of Utoya and Oslo. Breivik was a far-right opponent of immigration, cultural Marxism, and feminism. He killed eight people in Oslo with a bomb before shooting 69 others at a summer camp sponsored by the Labor Party. Asne Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, recounts Breivik's transformation from a troubled teenager to a wannabe teenage taggingger to, as he later would brag to a lawyer about it, "the greatest monster in Norwegian history since [Fascist politician, Nazi collaborator Vidkun] Quisling. "
This is the reason why this is book is #14 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#13 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Europe: Sweden
David Fincher has given The Girl With the Dragon Tatta serious software and operating system update. The English-language remake of the novel by Stieg Larsson is smoother, more refined, and sexier than its Swedish counterparts. It's a powerful, confident movie with a lot of brutal violence.
It is Daniel Craig now playing Mikael Blomkvist. He is an investigative journalist in Stockholm, called by Christopher Plummer (an unknown industrialist) to solve the decades-old mystery surrounding his niece. This cold case will investigate serial killings and Sweden's dark wartime history of Nazi sympathizers. Blomkvist also has an exceptional assistant: Lisbeth (Rooney Mara), the dragon-tattooed computer hacker with a severe attitude severeeant genius.
This is the reason why this is book is #13 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#12 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Gone Viking By Helen Russell
Europe: Denmark
Gone Viking was a book I bought earlier this summer for my book group (we are all foreigners living in Denmark and chose this one due to its links with Denmark). Even though I have never read chick-lit, I was open to giving it a try. (Not dissing the genre, just saying that it isn't the type of thing I enjoy reading! ). It was not a book that we enwantedand some of us didn't finish it. It was chosen because almost everyone moving to Denmark has read Helen Russell's a Year of Living Danishly. Now I don't think I'll be reading that book.
It revolves around Alice, a strict British dentist with two children. She also has panic attacks. Maybe she has had a fling. She attends a dental conference and believes her life will be ruined. This is whSheat Melissa take her on a week-long "retreat". It turns out that Melissa's idea for a retreat is a women-only 'get in touch your inner Viking' session, on a remote island off the coast from Denmark. It's wet and cold. Not Alice's idea. Melissa would love to bond with her sister, which only makes things worse
This is the reason why this is book is #12 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#11 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: The Railway Children Edith Nesbit
Europe: England
Edith Nesbit is well-known for her happy-go lucky tales about children experiencing magical adventures. In this book, she proved that she can write a similarly engaging story about a family dealing with serious problems. Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis start out as happy as the children in the Phoenix and the Carpet. Their father mysteriously disappears and their mother moves them into a tiny cottage in the country. There, they have no friends or school, and can only do nothing but play in the garden and look at the barges along the canal. They have to make it through the day without any servants. They make less as Mother has to sell stories for a living.
They make the most of their experience by having a series of delightful adventures. Through their honesty, courage, playfulness, kindness, and willingness to take risks, they win the hearts of everyone in the village, including the doctor, the station-master, porter, and the old gentleman who wave back every day from his train. They learn from their mistakes and make amends for all their quarrels.
What adventures! Bobbie is accidentally swept away by a train, when she was only trying to get the attention of the driver... The children help a lost and confused alien find his way... They prevent a railway accident and save a boy from getting hurt in the tunnel... They save a child from a burning house... And Bobbie finally helps solve the mystery behind their father's absence.
It's difficult to pick the most charming of the many Nesbit-created children. It's a joy to get to know each one. This book is a serious one, but it doesn't get too sentimental. You can still admire Bobbie, Pete and Phil as much as any of the other Nesbit kids. This book is perhaps less well-known because of its serious tone. There is much to love here for those who are willing to look!
This book is recommended for anyone who is fascinated by trains or knows someone who is.
This is the reason why this is book is #11 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#10 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Europe: Scotland
EBR doesn't often dive into romance. Actually, I just checked how many books we have with the tag "romance" on them. You want to find out how many? Two. One of them, I was tricked to read. Because having one review in any given genre seems silly and two seem more like an excuse for removing the genre than one, I decided to add to the total and review this genre at EBR. Yes, I do. I am too much. You'll be able to thank me later for being generous. In all seriousness, I wanted to review the book because I could mention that Sam Sykes's mom is the author. If you don't know Sam Sykes, you can check out my next review. This one is a good alternative.
OUTLANDER ( Alex) was the first book in the Outlander series and has been around for quite some time. 1991. Yeesh. That was when I was still in highschool. The author has written eight books in this series over the 26 years since then, with another one planned. They have been published about once every four to five years. This is about the same as what GRRM has been granting us. It was picked up by Stars for adaptation to TV, and they are currently working on season 4. It's obvious that this series is loved by many people.
This is the reason why this is book is #10 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#9 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: The Girl Who Came Back by Hazel Gaynor
Europe: Ireland
A novel about Titanic was something I had always wanted to do. The era, images of the ship and the tale of the tragic maiden journey were all fascinating to me. They are powerful, tragic, and romantic. After years of trying to avoid writing about such a huge story, the centenary in 2012 gave me the push I needed to write about Titanic.
The true story of the fourteen Irish emigrants who fled their home in County Mayo to travel to America on the Titanic, inspired THE GIRL THAT CAME HOME. Locally, the group is called the Addergoole Fourteen. The loss of eleven passengers from Addergoole Group was the greatest proportional loss of life in one region when Titanic crashed. The names of all the members of the group were changed for the purpose of this novel. This is a fiction, even though it is based on fact.
This is the reason why this is book is #9 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#8 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Suite Francaise By Irene Nemirovsky
Europe: France
Suite Francaise has a remarkable achievement. It vividly depicts Paris's chaos after the Second World War, and the life of a small French provincial town under German occupation. Its success is only enhanced by the circumstances in which it was written.
Suite Francaiseis one of those books in which it is impossible to discuss the story without also discussing the story.
Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. Irene's father was a self-made banker who built incredible wealth for his family. However, Irene lived a lonely childhood because of her distant, cold mother. Fiction would be the outlet for her ferocious hatred of her mother, and her disdain for her Jewish community. Reading was an escape for Irene, and she spent many hours hiding from the Russian Revolution reading literature.
This is the reason why this is book is #8 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#7 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Expo58 by Jonathan Coe
Europe: Belgium
Three Septembers back, Belgian Radio 1 offered to interview Jonathan Coe in one of Brussels's most remarkable buildings, the eight spheres of the iconic . The novelist must have looked up in silent thanks to the muse for history. Clio had just given him, as a storyteller, the bizarre circumstances surrounding the 1958 World's Fair. This was an unlikely postwar event.
Coe could not have made it up. The 1958 World's Fair and Britain's participation in it are spookily attuned with the novelist's imagination. Coe's fiction has been adapted to serve a mind that is fascinated by, even obsessed, with the unique idiosyncrasies and nuances of British life at home and abroad. This subject is often brought to the attention of Peter Ackroyd Julian Barnes Maggie Gee, and even John Fowles. It's the equivalent to tying the tail on the donkey. This is fraught with danger.
This is the reason why this is book is #7 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#6 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: The Book Thief Markus Zusak
Europe: Germany
The Book Thief is the story of Liesel who is taken in by Death to live with her mother. Death tells the story and you end up liking Death. The narration gives a different perspective to the story. Death's words are often very profound and beautiful.
The Book Thief takes place in Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War Two. Liesel's younger brother is killed while on the way to her new home. She then steals her first book, The Gravedigger's Handbook. She finds a new papa and mama when she arrives at her new house. Liesel was haunted every night by nightmares about her brother's death. She and her Papa decided to take on the challenge of reading the book.
This book was a real eye opener for me. This is the first book I've ever read about the war from a German perspective. You realize that many Germans were not as evil as they are often made out to be. This is not the type of story that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. You feel the sadness around Liesel's story until you realize that it was this way for many people, and how serious it is.
The Book Thief, upon reflection, leaves one feeling of guilt. The British bombs in Germany are what kill the protagonists and cause the reader to weep.
Overall, I rate it 8/10 and would recommend it to anyone 13 years old and up. It is a serious story that may not be understood by younger readers.
This is the reason why this is book is #6 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#5 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Hotel du Lac By Anita Brookner
Europe: Switzerland
JG Ballard did not win the Booker in spite of its long and rich history. Not for the Drowned. High Rise. Crash is not an option. copyright Nights is not permitted. Not for Empire Of The Sun, most notably. This failure to reward greatness a quarter century later seems a tragedy. It annoyed many critics at the time and Anita Brookner the writer who was lucky enough to be selected in his place, received a lot of stick.
Malcolm Bradbury called Hotel du Lac her winning novel "parochial" and said that it wasn't the kind of book that should win the Booker. Brookner was kind enough to note that it wasn't her fault that she won this prize. However, the New Statesman called it "pretentious". The author half-apologised for her books being "quite nice, but unimportant", and suggested that it might have been more beneficial if Empire Of The Sun won. She was correct. She was right, both from the perspective that Empire Of The Sun has so much merit and also because of the outrage she caused. It is regrettable that Hotel du Lac arose from the perception of Ballard being robbed of his crown. This book is not one to be raged at. This book should be enjoyed and admired. It is fervent and quiet, perhaps.
This is the reason why this is book is #5 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#4 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: When Nietzche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom
Europe: Austria
When Nietzsche wept is a historical novel. The relationships between the characters and their families are based on real life. It is evident that Irvin Yalom did his research thoroughly. However, the main relationship between Breuer & Nietzsche is fictional. Sigmund Freud is briefly mentioned in the story. He is cool and young, and very different to the Sigmund frud we envision.
It describes the origins of psychotherapy, and also serves as a primer on Nietzschean philosophy. While the psychotherapy was good, the Nietzschean philosophy was quite fascinating. Many amazing things Nietzsche has to say make us think. Surprised to learn that Nietzsche originally said the famous line " What does not kill me, make me stronger". This line was used for generations by bosses to incite (or torture) their employees when things got difficult at work. It made me smile. This was the first week I started at work. It was a line that my boss used to tell me, and it made me hate my boss and his boss for a long while.
I have always wanted to read Nietzsche's books, particularly'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. Now, after reading Yalom's book, I am eager to get that book.
I enjoyed reading 'When Nietzsche Wept'. It is a fascinating (but fictitious) story about how psychotherapy began. It also provides a fascinating introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy.
This is the reason why this is book is #4 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#3 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Franz Kafka: The Trial
Europe: Czech Republic
The Trial was published more than 90 years ago. It was written more than 100 years ago. It has been a literary masterpiece, studied and debated over the years, and was named Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century. It is hard to fault this book's history, but it was not something I enjoyed reading.
The text was difficult to read at first. Kafka (or the translator) has written throughout in paragraphs that tend to go on for several pages. I remember one that was ten pages. The translator doesn't even begin a new line of speech, so the reader must continue to read endless passages. The protagonist is referred as K., and this added to my reading difficulties. These are probably standard German literary procedures, but they did not help me understand the work.
Despite the surrealist setting of many scenes, Kafka created an atmosphere. It is possible to see if it is real life, a nightmare, or the author's vision for a spiritual judgment. I can't answer.
Although The Trial is written in third person, I believe that the story follows K. who sees everything through his eyes. Although there is action in the book, most of it consists only of strange conversations with a series of characters who are neither warm nor believable. It is frustrating, too, that we are not allowed know what K. is charged with.
This isn't the first book to address the secrets and mystery of the legal system. Dostoyevsky had previously explored these themes in Crime and Punishment and Dickens in Bleak House, but The Trial seems to take this criticism to the extreme. Is it possible for the reader to believe such a message if it is placed in such unlikely places.
Richard Stokes, the translator gives a brief introduction, but Alma Classics has not included the Extra Material or Bibliography sections that I found so helpful in their other publications.
Some readers will read The Trial in order to create a bucket list. Some will be thrilled to have the chance to solve the impossible. If you don't fall within one of these categories, I recommend that you look elsewhere for your next novel. Two stars have been awarded to this book.
This is the reason why this is book is #3 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#2 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
Europe: Hungary
Some years back, the permanent secretary to the Nobel Prize jury had some unkind words to say about American literature. Horace Engdahl (the secretary) stated that the U.S. was too isolated and too insular. "They don't translate enough and don't really take part in the great dialogue of literature. This ignorance is restraining." His remarks upset some people here, but despite his obvious oversimplifications, he was correct.
Recent American literature has been looking inward. Julie Orringer's debut novel, "The Invisible Bridge", is a great example of this. It follows her highly-respected story collection, . It takes introspective themes that we love in American literature, from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself to A. M. Homes's Music for Torching, and turns them in a new direction.
Orringer's central character is Andras Levi. He is a promising student in architecture and leaves Hungary in the 1930s to study in Paris. His scholarship is then revoked by anti-Jewish laws. As you would expect, the trials that he and his wife face and the extended families they live with will only get worse over the years. The epic story of their happiest and worst days, as well as their struggles, is told in dramatic, epic fashion.
This is the reason why this is book is #2 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe
#1 of Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe: Summer at The Lake By Erica James
Europe: Italy
The wedding invitation changed everything for Floriana. If she hadn't been so focused on the possibility of witnessing the true love of her heart get married, she wouldn't have missed the car.
She would not have needed to call for Adam Strong and Esme Silcox, an elderly spinster.
If Floriana hadn't met Adam or Esme, she wouldn't have been able to accept Seb's wedding in Lake Como.
Lake Como brings back memories for Esme of her nineteen-year old love affair with the man she met at the lake. She's often wondered where the man who stole her heart so many years ago, a man who has changed her life forever.
Esme and Floriana must face the past and the future on the shores this most beautiful and romantic of lakes.
Erica James books have been a favorite of mine for years. Hidden Talents is one of my favourite books. It tells the story of characters who meet at a group for creative writers. Precious time was another. Clara and Ned travel to the Peak District by campervan, where they become involved with a variety of fascinating characters. This new book is just as wonderful. I have never been to the Italian Lakes, but after reading this book I felt like I had. I sat down and sighed, realizing how much I missed the characters that I cared about. It's a wonderful book for anyone who enjoys to escape into the pages. This book transports you to Oxford and then to Lake Como and takes you on a journey through the lives of the characters.
This is the reason why this is book is #1 on the list of books to read before traveling to Europe.
Conclusion for 15 Books to Read Before Traveling to Europe
This Concludes the list, I hope you have enjoyed the list. This covers wide range of book from various different genres. After reading these books, it will only further enhance your experience in traveling to Europe.