10 Best Books to Read While Camping

 

We all read books for different reasons. Some of us just want to be inspired. Perhaps we just want to read something that is similar in regards to what we are doing at the moment. Or maybe we like to read things that relate a lot to our current mindset and viewpoints about life.

For me, I do a lot of camping. Whether I’m on the side of the road lying in my bed in the back of my jeep or in my tent somewhere in the backcountry, I’ve always got a book that’s inspiring and keeps me turning the page. So I threw together a list of 10 Best Books to Read While Camping.

 

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Why These are the Best Books

 

These aren’t just random books I’ve picked out to recommend to you all. I feel like these are some of the best books and I’ve read every single one of them, some more than once. Each of them have played a very important role in the way I have grown as a person in one way or another. They’ve inspired me by creating a simple idea or a dream in the back of my head that I subconsciously acted on over the years. I read Walden on Wheels and it inspired me to live in my Jeep and travel around California. I read On the Road and I moved to Australia and hitch-hiked around the country for a whole year.  I read A Walk in the Woods and Wild and realized that I wanted to attempt a full thru-hike, the next year I completed a 2,650 mile thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. Books are great, folks. They do a lot more for us than you may actually realize.

 

1. On the Road – by: Jack Kerouac

 

 

Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.

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2. The Alchemist – by: Paulo Coelho

Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

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3. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

 

 

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the “wild west.” Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

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4. Desert Solitude – Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire is a collection of vignettes about life in the wilderness and the nature of the desert itself by park ranger and conservationist, Edward Abbey. The book details the unique adventures and conflicts the author faces, from dealing with the damage caused by development of the land or excessive tourism, to discovering a dead body. However Desert Solitaire is not just a collection of one man’s stories, the book is also a philosophical memoir, full of Abbey’s reflections on the desert as a paradox, at once beautiful and liberating, but also isolating and cruel. Often compared to Thoreau’s Walden, Desert Solitaire is a powerful discussion of life’s mysteries set against the stirring backdrop of the American southwestern wilderness.

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5. The Last Season – Eric Blehm

 

 

Destined to become a classic of adventure literature, The Last Season examines the extraordinary life of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson and his mysterious disappearance in California’s unforgiving Sierra Nevada mountains as perilous as they are beautiful. Eric Blehm’s masterful work is a gripping detective story interwoven with the riveting biography of a complicated, original, and wholly fascinating man.

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6. Lighting Out – Daniel Duane

 

Lighting Out by Daniel Duane is a coming-of-age memoir, first and foremost. But it’s also about the Yosemite climbing lifestyle in the early 1990s and the author’s effort to immerse himself in that dirtbag world, while figuring out what to do with his life. It beautifully evokes a specific time and place, as well as captures that post-college searching and desire for adventure and romance that resonates for so many. From the Grateful Dead to an awkward tumble into a relationship, and from California surf towns to the sheer wall of El Cap, Duane’s story meanders through loosely linked events and observations that, taken together, convey a tangible sense of freedom and the search for fulfillment.

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7. Wild – Cheryl Strayed

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

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8. A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson

 

 

The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America–majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way–and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).

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9. Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer

 

 

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.  How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

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10. Walden on Wheels – Ken Ilguanas

In this frank and witty memoir, Ken Ilgunas lays bare the existential terror of graduating from the University of Buffalo with $32,000 of student debt. Ilgunas set himself an ambitious mission: get out of debt as quickly as possible. Inspired by the frugality and philosophy of Henry David Thoreau, Ilgunas undertook a 3-year transcontinental journey, working in Alaska as a tour guide, garbage picker, and night cook to pay off his student loans before hitchhiking home to New York.

Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled in a master’s program at Duke University, determined not to borrow against his future again. He used the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline van and outfitted it as his new dorm. The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be more than an adventure—it would be his very own “Walden on Wheels.”

Freezing winters, near-discovery by campus police, and the constant challenge of living in a confined space would test Ilgunas’s limits and resolve in the two years that followed. What had begun as a simple mission would become an enlightening and life-changing social experiment. Walden on Wheels offers a spirited and pointed perspective on the dilemma faced by those who seek an education but who also want to, as Thoreau wrote, “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

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What are Your Best Books?

I hope you found this review helpful. I truly feel like these are some of the best books out there. We all have different tastes in what we read but I feel like if you are into traveling and spending your time in the outdoors, I feel like it’s a very small chance you won’t enjoy each one of these books I’ve recommended. If you have any questions or have any recommendations for me so I can add them to my future lists, please drop me a line in the comment section below.

 

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