Riot Headline The Best Books of 2024
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30 of Your Favorite Road Trip Books

Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by A Robot in the Garden by Deborah Install.

robot in the gardenBen’s really great at failing at things—his job, being a husband, taking the garbage out. But then he finds a battered robot named Tang in his garden. And Tang needs Ben. More ornery and prone to tantrums than one would expect from something made of gears and springs, Tang desperately must be fixed—and he just might be the thing to fix what’s broken in Ben. Together they will discover that friendship can rise up under the strangest of circumstances, and what it really means to be human.


There’s just something about warmer weather that makes a road trip book sound like the perfect reading. Road trip books are fun, offer a lot of opportunity for strange and bizarre experiences, and they can offer a slice of life in places people don’t always know about.

We asked you to tell us what your favorite road trip books were, and you answered. Get ready to get reading!

 

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Nomads by Richard Grant

Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

The Car by Gary Paulsen

Carsick by John Waters

The Drifters by James Michener

Flaming Iguanas by Erika Lopez

Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

The Great Divide by Emily Kiernan

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

Not Quite Husband by Sherry Thomas

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Setting Free The Bears by John Irving

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

Vivian Apple at the End of the World by Katie Coyle

Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig