Here are some favorite books when we're on the road:

RV'ING   |   CYCLING   |   HIKING   |   BIRDING   |   OTHER TRAVEL   |   FICTION   |   MORE

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All book descriptions and opinions are purely our own.

Trailer Travel

By Bryan Burkhart, Phil Noyes, Allison Arieff. History of "mobile America" inspired by the PBS show California's Gold. Plenty of great old photos, ads, and drawings.

Portable Houses

By Irene Rawlings, Mary Abel. Features owners of ingenious movable homes -- old RVs, yurts, trains and more. Takes the term life on the road to a whole different level.

10-Minute Tech: The Book

More than 600 quick tips, usually inexpensive and creative, for improving your RV. From the column in Trailer Life magazine. Volume 2 and Volume 3 are also available now.

RV Repair and Maintenance Manual

By Bob Livingston. A must for all RV owners. 'Course, we just have to remember to get out this book when something goes wrong in the RV.

The Road That Has No End

By Tim Travis. Subtitle says it all: How we traded our ordinary lives for a global bicycle touring adventure. Tim and Cindie are still on their bike ride around the world. This may be Geno's all-time favorite bike book.

Spokesongs

By Willie Weir. Cycling adventures in India, South Africa and the Balkans. From getting lost to getting robbed, this collection of little stories is an easy read.

California Hiking

By Tom Stienstra, Ann Marie Brown. Excellent organization and descriptions. Wherever you go, there's probably a hike listed here. You can also find hikes by category -- e.g., butt-kicker, waterfalls.

120 Hikes on the Oregon Coast

By Bonnie Henderson. Nicely organized with good information. Many black-and-white photos. We used this book on our 3-month Northwest trip in 2005.

Day Hikes in San Luis Obispo County

By Robert Stone. Interesting selection of easy to moderate hikes in SLO County, on the CA Central Coast. Good layout, brief directions.

120 Great Hikes in and near Palm Springs

By Philip Ferranti with Hank Koenig. Moderate to very strenuous hikes in the desert, canyons, and mountains surrounding Palm Springs. We have the earlier 100 Great Hikes edition.

Washington Hiking

By Scott Leonard. If you plan to hike in the Cascades, this is the book to get. Geno and the gang hiked some of these trails on their 2006 North Cascades trip.

Condor

By John Nielsen. Passionate account of the near extinction and ongoing recovery of this giant bird. We attended the author's entertaining lecture and reading in Santa Barbara in winter 2006.

Kingbird Highway

By Kenn Kaufman. How a 16-year-old kid spent a year traveling 69,000 miles on less than $1000 to spot birds. Well-written coming-of-age story that even non-birders would enjoy.

The Feather Quest

By Pete Dunne. A year around the US, following the birds and the seasons. You might think that birders would make dry writers, but Nielsen, Kaufman and now Dunne are superb storytellers.

Hawks in Flight

By Pete Dunne, David Sibley, Clay Sutton. Since you usually see hawks up in the sky, this book shows what they look like on their underside and describes identifying marks and migration patterns.

A Photographic Guide to North American Raptors

By Brian K. Wheeler, William S. Clark. Lots of full-color photos of perched and flying hawks. A good companion to Hawks in Flight.

Red-Tails in Love

By Marie Winn. True love story of red-tailed hawks in Central Park, New York City. This book is as much about the people who watch them as it is about the birds themselves.

The Wind Masters

By Pete Dunne. Short stories of North American raptors. Fictionalized, sorta humanized, to give a lasting impression of each bird's life and behavior.

Lives of North American Birds

By Kenn Kaufman. Provides much more information than the standard bird ID book -- habitat, migration, behavior and more. Great supplementary reference.

The Sibley Guide to Birds

By David Sibley. The best reference book we've found for identifying birds. Detailed drawings and text. Too large to take birding, so see field guide at right.

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America

By David Sibley. Smaller, more portable version of the big Sibley book at left. Covers only the Western half of North America, but that works for us.

Blue Highways

By William Least Heat-Moon. Classic road trip on back roads, aka blue highways. If you like to meet interesting characters and visit time-forgotten places, this book will lure you out onto the open road.

Travels with Charley

By John Steinbeck. In 1960, the author set out with his dog Charley and his camper Rocinante to remedy his "virus of restlessness." OK, well, actually this is the classic road trip.

Journey of a Summer Sun

By Robin Cody. Journey by canoe down the full length of the Columbia River. Pithy observations about history, politics, nature and human nature.

Moon Handbooks: Washington

By Don Pitcher. Moon Handbooks are outstanding for pre-trip research and on-the-road reference. Geno used this book to prepare for his 2006 North Cascades bike trip.

Moon Handbooks: Arizona

By Bill Weir. Another in the fine Moon series. Useful, accurate information. Thick but compact size is convenient for traveling.

Moon Handbooks: Oahu

By Robert Nilsen. Obviously we like the Moon books. Different authors, but information is consistently good for our needs.

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty

By W. L. Rusho. Poignant story of a 20-year-old adventurer/artist/writer who vanished into the Utah desert in 1934. Most of the book consists of remarkable letters written by Ruess to his family and friends.

Crossing Arizona

By Chris Townsend. Account by one of the first people to hike the 800-mile Arizona Trail. On his 2-month journey, Townsend experienced AZ's beautiful but harsh desert, grasslands, sky islands, and forests.

Women of the Silk

By Gail Tsukiyama. Exquisitely written story of a young Chinese girl who is sent to work in a silk factory in the early 1900s.

Kafka on the Shore

By Haruki Murakami. The plot is so surreal, it's hard to explain -- best to read the Amazon.com summary! This is the first book by Murakami that Patti has read, and it may be her favorite book of the year.

The Shipping News

By E. Annie Proulx. Quoyle, a lumbering loser and mediocre newspaperman, finds hope in a remote Newfoundland harbor town. Strong character development and sense of place.

The Blind Assassin

By Margaret Atwood. Takes a while to get into this book, but it is worth the effort. The story doesn't progress linearly and there's a novel-within-a-novel. Can't even begin to mention the plot. Challenging, but a very satisying read.

The Legend of Fire Horse Woman

By Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Three generations of Japanese women struggle in America, from the early 1900s through internment at Manzanar.

Snow Falling on Cedars

By David Guterson. A Japanese American fisherman is on trial for murder in Washington state in the 1950s. This poignant novel combines a murder mystery, love story, and history lesson.

The Poisonwood Bible

By Barbara Kingsolver. Family saga of an American Baptist preacher in the Belgian Congo, from the viewpoints of his wife and four daughters. Political and personal upheavals of a country and family in crisis.

Pigs in Heaven

By Barbara Kingsolver. This is the first book by Kingsolver that Patti read. She loved the author's style so much that she has since enjoyed The Bean Trees, Prodigal Summer, Animal Dreams, and The Poisonwood Bible (at left).

The Da Vinci Code

By Dan Brown. Complex murder mystery that intersects religion, history, art, cryptology, secret societies, feminism and more. When you peel away the layers, is it fact or fiction? Haven't seen the movie.

Tell No One

By Harlan Coben. A man receives an e-mail from his wife, eight years after her murder. Real page-turner, a good summer or winter read.

Memoirs of a Geisha

By Arthur Golden. "Autobiography" of a Kyoto geisha written convincingly by a white American male. The book's depiction of geisha culture is actually more interesting than its love story. Haven't seen the movie.

The Joy Luck Club

By Amy Tan. Bridging culture and generation gaps with four Chinese immigrant moms and their American-born daughters. Exquisite character and story development.

Three Cups of Tea

By Greg Mortenson. Long story short....after failing to climb K2, Mortenson built more than 50 schools for impoverished villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The inspirational story of how one man is making a difference in the world.

Audacity of Hope

By Barack Obama. Lays out not only what Obama believes, but why and how he developed his life views. Very well written, readable...and convincing.

The Dunites

By Norm Hammond. Fascinating history of a community of artists, writers and other free spirits in the Pismo Dunes on the CA Central Coast. They lived there in driftwood shacks and tents, mostly in the 1920s and '30s.

Epitaph for a Peach

By David Mas Masumoto. A Central Valley farmer devotes a year to save his Sun Crest peaches. He works with nature, family and the market economy to survive another four seasons.

30-Minute Meals: Get Togethers

By Rachael Ray. Tasty, quick recipes for cooking at home or on the road. We keep this book in the fifth wheel.

Sierra Nevada Wildflowers

By Karen Wiese. Helpful reference book for ID'ing wildflowers in Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and elsewhere in the Sierras. Organized by flower color with good color photos.

Colorado Desert Wildflowers

By Jon Mark Stewart. This book includes Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, so we use it there extensively. Good color photos, organized by flower color.

Under the Banner of Heaven

By Jon Krakauer. Explores the tenets of fundamentalist Mormonism by going back to the roots of the LDS church. Now, you wouldn't think that would be a page-turner, but it is.