NEXT STOP: BOOKS FOR THE ROAD

Discover forgotten havens with "Abandoned Italy" by Robin Brinaert

If you find yourself exploring the beautiful surrounds of the Italian peninsula, we recommend you take along Abandoned Italy by French author Robin Brinaert. This photographic album will enable you to discover some of the most charming, offbeat places that most tourists overlook. You will find stories of abandoned buildings, steeped in mystery and legend that are just waiting to be discovered, such as the former hunting lodge of the Duchess of Parma, a disused psychiatric asylum and various abandoned churches. With this work, Brinaert manages to inject new life and appeal into unusual places, prompting us to rediscover old traditions and legends.

Reflections for the road: "Le coordinate della felicità" (The Coordinates of Happiness) by Gianluca Gotto

Published in 2018, before smart working became the new norm, this book is a journey of discovery into your own wellbeing. It is a semi-autobiographical novel (originally written in Italian) that prompts us to reflect on the belief systems imposed by ourselves or by society around us, and to consider whether they are redundant and outdated in some ways. The two protagonists, Gianluca and Claudia, decide to embark on a one-way trip starting from Turin and ending up in Perth, Australia, during which they discover new ways of living and working. On reaching their destination they decide to change their lives by becoming "digital nomads", which is that newly coined term for people who work remotely via their laptop while travelling. Who knows, it might even persuade you to take your life in a totally new direction!

Old but gold! "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac

The most famous American road trip in literature! This book, first published in 1957 and heavily censored for decades, is set in the 1940s and tells the story of two young men, Dean and Sal, who decide to leave behind their bourgeois background and see the big, wide world. As we follow their travels criss-crossing the endless highways of the United States and Mexico, we get a glimpse into the lives of these two beatniks on their never-ending quest for self-knowledge and experience, in a book about friendship, rebellion and new discoveries. Besides spawning a new kind of travel-writing, Kerouac’s novel also spoke for an entire generation.

A journey for the soul: "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

If you haven't checked it out already, we recommend that you read this book at least once in your life. Watching the film doesn't count! Into The Wild is the story of Chris McCandless, who cut ties with family and gave away everything he owned before embarking on a solitary journey into the desolate wilderness of Alaska, where he also met his untimely death. It is a journey to unknown lands, but also to the depths of the soul, that encourages us to reassess and reflect on the place that we each occupy in the world.

For travelling with your imagination: "Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne

Who hasn't read this story at some point during their formative years? But of course, the world appears totally different depending on whether you look at it through the eyes of a child, or those of an adult. That's why going back and re-reading this novel could reveal amazing new discoveries. After placing a £20,000 wager with members of an exclusive London club, the English gentleman Phileas Fogg and his French valet, Passepartout, attempt to circumnavigate the globe in just 80 days. From the outset, Fogg is confident that by planning every transfer and stage of this complex journey, he can turn it into a simple exercise, emboldened by the presumption typical of Europeans at the time, who were emboldened by the certainty of having imposed their own rules and customs in the countries they had colonised. Driven not by curiosity or a desire for knowledge, but rather by greed and temerity, Fogg soon comes to realise that there is a lot more to travelling than he had anticipated. It is a story that invites the reader to rethink their beliefs, re-evaluating them and looking at them with different eyes and points of view. Are you ready to challenge your preconceptions?

Whether you are heading for the sea or for the mountains, whether you prefer a weekend in the city or in the countryside, make sure you choose a good book to accompany you on board your Ducato-based motorhome. That way you can transport yourself to two different corners of the world at once!