Food is a huge part of the experience of travel — whether it’s honey-roasted crickets at a street stall in Bangkok or the best pizza of your life in Naples. In Food Lovers’ Guide to Montreal, you’ll find out where to track down the best this city has to offer, from poutine to sugar pie.

If you’ve ever traveled to the Middle East, are pondering a trip there or prefer to travel “armchair style,” here are six works of fiction and memoir — chosen by Nicholas Hoare bookseller Ben Walsh — about the Islamic Republican of Iran.

As a kid, I loved camping, and the best part was heading out into the woods in search of the perfect hot dog stick. After an exhaustive search risking run-ins with poison ivy and wild animals, I’d attempt to roast a hot dog in the campfire to golden-brown perfection — without accidentally setting it on fire and burning it to a blackened crisp.

There’s one problem with 501 Must-Visit Wild Places: There are now several hundred more places to add to my ever-expanding list of places I want to visit in this lifetime. Whether you’re an armchair traveler or an adventurer in search of wild places to camp, hike or mountaineer, there are literally 501 ideas in this book to fuel your wanderlust.

Powder. Blow. Flake. Nose candy. Whatever you call it, cocaine is intimately tied to Latin America — from building empires to funding civil war. On recent trips to Colombia and Panama, I never encountered the stuff, but its influence was all around me.

Traveling with Elisabeth Eaves is intoxicating. The author, now in her 40s, recounts her 20s-something hunger for globe-trotting, while falling in and out of passionate love in Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents (Seal Press).

When you can’t wrangle up the time and money to travel, let your reading material do the work. This summer reading list is sure to get the worldly travel bug stirring. Book lovers and travel junkies can get a fix of both worlds, thanks to Indigo’s Top Summer Reads selection featuring, what else? Travel, travel and more travel. Oh, and some pretty rocking characters, too.

If you’ve ever dreamed of traveling through Pakistan (the Karakoram Highway, anyone?), or you’re an armchair traveler interested in a different perspective on the politics of this region, pick up a copy of Granta’s recent compilation on Pakistan.

It’s not a travel book. But it could be the one book that will get your butt off the couch and onto an airplane. The hardest part of travel is not slugging a backpack up the Devil’s Staircase in New Zealand or navigating your way through a Calcutta train station in 40 C heat during a civil workers strike, but simply getting yourself on a plane/train/bus.

I have a confession: Up until a few months ago, I didn’t own a smartphone. I was still using an old cell phone that required duct tape to keep it together and a pair of tweezers to remove the SIM card. I’m not a technophobe, but part of me resisted the idea of being “on” all the time. When I travel, I like to disconnect from the hectic pace of North American life.

When it comes to prepping my backpack for an adventure, I tend to travel super-light. I often carry little more than basic necessities. This has often worked in my favour — more than a few times I’ve traveled with friends hauling around huge, overstuffed, back-breaking bags filled with more things than they’d ever need while my back is happily spared the pain of excess weight.

It’s so bright and cheery, I just had to blast Coldplay’s supercharged tune, Viva La Vida to accompany the fattest, greatest travel book stationed in my home office at the moment. As I write this, it’s supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. And, certainly, as I look outside my window, it’s a dreary and grey one indeed. But, the power of imagery is something else, non?