Eden Travel Book Club
Welcome to Eden Travel Book Club! Here, you’ll find unique travel book recommendations, reading lists that spotlight memoirs and essays and stories in translation, and of course, our monthly travel book club pick. Each month, I select one travel book (either fiction or nonfiction) to read alongside you. In 2026, we’ll be traveling everywhere from Japan to Borneo to Croatia.
February Book Club Pick
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
- Paris setting (a city so beautifully described)
- an American expat who hides from love
- an Italian barman who speaks his mind
- a headstrong woman with a case of wanderlust
- & a doomed affair
“Well,” I said, “Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York —”
He was smiling. I stopped.
“What do you feel in New York?” he asked.
“Perhaps you feel,” I told him, “all the time to come. There’s such power there, everything is in such movement. You can’t help wondering—I can’t help wondering—what it will all be like—
many years from now.”
– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (pg. 33)
P.S. This is a no-pressure book club. You can join at any time. You can skip any month. And if you don’t like the book I pick, that’s okay too. Don’t feel like you have to finish it. I still love hearing your thoughts.
