Equally engaging are the author’s brief rumination on disgusting meals and how they tasted and his quick peek into the lives of the spouses, friends and lovers who went along for the ride as largely invisible sidekicks on some of history's great travel adventures. Alternatively pious and irreverent, this is an uneasy almanac of favorite quotes and advice for the would-be tourist that broadly features travel as a trope for personal enlightenment.

Theroux himself says: “From an early age I longed to leave home and to keep going. I cannot imagine not traveling.” Here he comes home to his library and takes us on a journey around his favorite authors. Most books clearly belong on bookshelves, and some on coffee tables. Others are known in Britain as “loo books” — ideal companions for those sedentary moments of solitude. “The Tao of Travel,” part compendium of quotations, part miscellany of literary pondering, might be one of those. Yet it’s also a more philosophical undertaking than that might imply.