RTW: Best Book of March

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week’s prompt was: What was the best book you read in March?

This has just been one of those months. You know what I mean? I started it with a big move from Virginia to Massachusetts and have been getting settled ever since. And even though all I’ve wanted to do was curl up with a good book, I’ve resisted. Sometimes there are more important things. Like finding the box that has your underwear.

Which brings me to my Best Book of March. I read two. The one I’d pick as my favorite is our YA Book Club read, Wanderlove.

Before I joined the Real World, I had a severe case of wanderlove. It started when I was young and taking charge of our family vacations. (Not that I got my way all the time. During my Agatha Christie phase, my idea of taking the Orient Express—yes, it still ran back then, until three years ago, in fact—got shot down pretty quickly.) I spent a semester studying at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and after my first day in the city I was completely, totally, 100 percent infected with wanderlove. The disease lasted through the rest of college and after, when my friends and I backpacked around Europe for a month.

And then I got a Real Job with Real Responsibilities and Real Bills and, well, you can pretty much guess what happened. I still have my bucket list of places to visit, but I no longer use my life savings to travel for a month. No, I save and save and save.

That’s why I loved Wanderlove so much. It brought me back to all of those trips I took when I was younger and didn’t know why every adult hates April* or why taking a vacation from work is so hard—even if you have vacation days.

So in honor of that, here are a few photos of places Wanderlove brought me back to. You should know, while I’ve been to all of these places, none of the photos were taken by me.** I used film when traveling because I didn’t have my super awesome Nikkon D-SLR at the time. (I’ll see if I can dig up the real photos and scan them in for my post on Friday.)

New Zealand countryside

Milford Sound, New Zealand

Climbing Franz Josef glacier, New Zealand

Scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Venice

Prague

Gaudi gardens, Barcelona

Florence

I’ll be doing a full review for the YA Book Club. On Friday. (You didn’t forget, right? Good.) Anyone still interested in joining but fuzzy on the details, go here.

Oh, and I’m still taking your outlining tips. Next week, expect a post of your genius ideas. On behalf of all pantsters, I thank you.

Where on Earth gives you wanderlove? If I had to pick, it’d be New Zealand.

* For those of you who don’t know, it’s the dreaded tax season.

** Click the photo to go to the source.