Some journeys begin at a departure gate. The better-value ones begin on page one, cost the price of a paperback, and let you spend a fortnight in 1950s India or a year beside an Irish lake without once removing your shoes at security.
The qualification for this shelf is simple: a sense of place so vivid you could draw a map from memory afterwards. Half are novels, half are true, and between them they'll carry you from a Florentine pensione to a farm in the Alpujarras, a Naples neighbourhood, the Kenyan night sky and a very windy rock off Newfoundland.
Pack nothing. Go everywhere. Send no postcards.
Take a book from the shelf
Before you land
Somewhere on this shelf is a place you've always meant to see. If the trip isn't possible this year, read your way there first: travellers who arrive already knowing a place's stories notice twice as much when they finally stand in them. And if the trip is possible, consider the book a deposit.
