Check out the ebooktravelguides.com top 5 best travel books 2011 for Amazon Kindle.

(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED KINGDOM - September 26th, 2011 - The competition for the big selling travel books on Amazon Kindle this year is tough, with travel writers battling it out on journeys from; twin brothers exploring the big question of “What do you really want to do with your life?” in the road trip comedy ‘Leaving London’, to Heather Lende’s exploration of life in small town Alaska in ‘If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name’.

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1. Leaving London: Road Trip USA
What do you really want to do with your life?
by Simon Raven, Chris Raven

Download it here: www.amazon.com/dp/B005P7E9L4/

Brothers find inspiration on a road trip that exposes the stark truth about work and relationships and which asks the question – what do you really want to do with your life?

The sudden break up with girlfriend Emily Willow finds Simon Raven, ex-amateur rock God and bored internet producer, on a Boeing 747 bound for Seattle. Led by his twin brother, Chris, who is more than happy to exchange a career in fashion photography for the open road, they embark on a buttock-clenching journey of paranoia and self-doubt, as they traverse Interstate Highway 15 through backcountry America.

Along the way our hapless heroes bumble through bear infested wilderness, meet the eccentric and plain weird on the American freeway, escape a bullwhip wielding maniac in Montana and survive the evils of Las Vegas. Testing their friendship to the limit as they battle to reach their nirvana, which exists in the form of the bikini beaches of California, the brothers find inspiration on a journey that exposes the stark truth about work and relationships and which asks the question, what do you really want to do with your life?

Poignant, candid and true, Leaving London is honestly written and hilariously funny.

2. If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name
News from Small-Town Alaska
by Heather Lende

Download it here: www.amazon.com/dp/B003I1WY2K/

Lende chronicles the various lives and deaths of the people of Haines, Alaska, an almost inaccessible hamlet 90 miles north ofJuneau. In writing her social and obituary columns for Haines’s Chilkat Valley News, some of which are included here, she blends reportage and humor. Lende has lived in Haines all her adult life and is well-known in town. She deftly illuminates local colour: the sewer plant manager who rides a motorcycle and sports a ZZ Top beard, the high school principal who moonlights as a Roy Orbison impersonator, and the one-legged female gold miner. Lende covers death in her community in all its forms, accidental, intentional and inevitable, and notes, “writing about the dead helps me celebrate the living.” While comic, the book also has some sensitive, insightful anecdotes. For example, Lende, a contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition, portrays the building of a coffin for a beloved mother by her youngest daughter; the sinking of a family boat with a tender farewell for a fearless fisherman; the mourning of a quirky, civic-minded “aging hippie”; and the goodbye to aTexaswoman who hosted an annual Mississippi blues party. Lende’s picture of an Alaskan small town is colorful and captivating.

3. Born to Run
by Chris McDougall

Download it here: www.amazon.com/dp/B004CFBMRY

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.

Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practised techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultra marathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.

With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons.

Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.

4. The Darkside of Disney
by Leonard Kinsey

Download it here: www.amazon.com/dp/B005FXZOMG/

The Darkside of Disney reveals all of the tips, tricks, scams, and stories that they don’t want you to know about! Unabashedly unafraid of offending the family-oriented audiences catered to by other Disney travel guides, author Leonard Kinsey gives intrepid travelers access to the seamy, raunchy, and often hilarious underbelly of Walt Disney World.

From cautionary tales of scoring illegal tickets, to thrilling accounts of exploring off-limits areas, to chronicles of drug-induced debauchery, this completely unauthorized guidebook will change the way you think about vacationing at “The Happiest Place on Earth”.

5. Billy Connolly’s Route 66
The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip

Download it here: www.amazon.com/dp/B005I4WBVE

The best-loved comedian in Britain hits the most famous highway in the world on an unforgettable journey. Billy Connolly, music-lover, biker, and scourge of the beige and bland the world over, has dreamed about taking a trip on the legendary Route 66 since he first heard Chuck Berry belting out one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll records of all time. And now he’s finally had the chance to do it, heading out on his custom-made trike in search of the real America that can still be found beyond the nation’s freeways. Travelling every one of its 2,278 miles from the skyscrapers of Chicago to Santa Monica Pier in California, Billy’s journey takes him past many of the essential icons of the United States: the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, and the funky neon-lit gas stations and diners that once lined the route. But it also gives him the chance to get to know the people who call it home, from Mervin the Amish carpenter, to fellow banjo enthusiast and obsessive instrument collector Rob, to Angel, one of the many people determined to keep the spirit of the Mother Road alive. Funny, touching and inspiring in equal measure, the tales he gathers on the way tell the story of modern America. And they might inspire a few people to get on their bikes as well. With his unrivalled instinct for a good story, and the gregariousness that has made him our most engaging national treasure, Billy Connolly is the ultimate guide to the ultimate road trip.

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