IN TRANSIT:FOR THE determined traveller in the pre- internet age, books were like diaries. Guides that had been humped across continents ended their trips torn and tattered, stained with spilled drinks and swatted insects, then lived out their well-earned retirement on proud display on sitting-room bookshelves, noble evidence of the grand tour.
Novels were as important. The truly hard-core backpacker would rip out pages as they were read to save room in the luggage; complete books served as currency, and were the perfect introduction for attractive strangers on trains, buses or worn-out hostel sofas. In more recent years it was almost impossible to go to a hostel in Asia that didn’t have someone clutching The Beach by Alex Garland, desperately hoping it was all true.
So what are the great travelling books of today, and are guidebooks still a travelling stalwart? "We get Bill Bryson quite a lot, and The Da Vinci Codegets in everywhere," groans Ronan Brady of Dublin's Avalon House Hostel. "Today there are a lot of people reading the Stieg Larsson trilogy, while Shantaram, The Roadand The White Tigerare also popular. Two people are here now with Twilight."
Julie Mitchell has just returned from a globe-trotting year. "I travelled with some books," she says. "I read a design one on how to be a designer without losing your soul, and American Godsby Neil Gaiman. I picked up Shantaramoff a bookshelf in a hostel, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Generally it was stupid romancey novels that I saw in the hostels, although Obama's books were fairly common as well."
Publishers needn’t be getting a little audacity of hope that the travel-book market is alive and well, though. “The laptop thing has exploded. A lot of people aren’t reading now; they are laptopping,” says Brady.
As for trying to impress fellow travellers with the odd pretentious tome, that era appears to be dead and gone. “Absolutely,” agrees Brady. “There’s much less socialising now. These days, sometimes the guys at the desk do the odd event and it can be very hard to get people involved. We have to turn off the Wi-Fi to get them up off their seats and away from their laptops.” It seems no one is flirting over a cracked copy of Herodotus any more.
Mitchell agrees that the trend is for flashpacking with netbooks. “I didn’t see anyone with an e-book reader, but so many people had netbooks. Wi-Fi was definitely something I was looking for when booking hostels.”
But surely when it comes to guides, the printed word is still king. “We get a lot of people with mainly Lonely Planet and the Rough Guides, and there are the Footprint books as well. People on shorter trips don’t even bother with guidebooks any more, whereas those on the six-month long trip will come through the door with a general guide to western Europe.
“In terms of guidebooks, it’s significantly less than four or five years ago. Now people tend to trust the online feedback much more than the guidebooks themselves.”