Adonis

My favourite place is on a quiet beach. My most common is on a train.

I'm fairly new here, so this is my first attempt at starting a thread. I was reading the one about bad film adaptations of books, but how about films that you enjoyed more than the book. For me it's The Motorcycle Diaries. The film brings a spirit to the story that (for me) was missing from the pages of the book, which was readable but very dry.

Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan

I've recently written a comedy travel book, and the following were all excellent inspirations, even though some of them aren't really travel books. In Search of Captain Zero - Allan Weisbecker. Not as funny as Cosmic Banditos, but more based on reality. More of a classic travelogue. Solomon Time - Will Randall. English teacher moves to the Solomon isles. Charming English humour. Los Angeles Without a Map - Richard Rayner. More about the craziness of LA than travel, but has plenty of laugh out loud funny moments coming from someone being outside their normal environment or comfort zone. You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers. Too many themes in this book to try to sum it up succinctly, but there is some beautiful travel writing in there. Off The map - Hib and Kika. Unconventional travelogue of two American hippie women in Europe. I hate to use the word charming twice in one post, but this is exactly that Three Men in a Boat: to Say Nothing of the Dog - Jerome K. Jerome. Old classic but one that is still

Try Cosmic Banditos by Allan Weisbecker. It's not exactly what you're talking about but it's along those lines, very funny and slightly based on reality.

It's not my favourite, but I recently read 'The Blinder' by Barry Hines (the guy who wrote Kes) and it was really good. It's about an up and coming footballer in a mining town in the 60s. Apart from being a good story, the contrast betweem football then and now is very interesting.

I try to read as many books as I can from authors I don't know. I use Amazon's 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought' feature on books I liked and see where it takes me. It's successful more often than not.

One of my favourite books ever. It's so easy to read but captures it's subject matter perfectly. Naive. Super - Erlend Loe (Author), Tor Ketil Solberg (Translator) (2005) This one is funny, well observed and superbly written Apathy and Other Small Victories - Paul Neilan (2006)