The sun was shining when I stopped my motorbike by an old tractor in rural Norway. 15 years earlier, I had worked on a machine just like it for my brother-in-law and I was looking forward to telling him about it at the kitchen table one evening in the future. At the same moment I remembered what I had seen and tried in Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France and England. My travelogue was getting too long for me to tell it over a single cup of tea.

Have you ever wanted to visit every single country in the world? Get ready to be inspired by this new book by Albert Podell, then. We recently received a review copy of Around The World in Fifty Years: My Adventure to Every Country on Earth (thank you!), and I was more than happy to dig in.

Did you think your travel days were over when you had kids? Think again. This guide – a complete guide to family travel – not only debunks that myth, but shows how family travel can inspire a whole new worldview – that of creativity, reflection, intercultural learning, and looking both near and far for life-changing experiences.

In the depths of the cold winter, do you pull out your gardening catalogs and plan? Do you brave the brisk winds to head to the mailbox, to pull in colorful seed catalogs? Additionally, do you worry about your gardens, when you travel? Enlist the help of neighbors for watering and caring for your gardens? Try to plan travel around your gardens?

I've got the book for you. It's a perfect antidode for the below zero temperatures, and a beautiful planning guide to a green summer in Paris.

Rowling, Carroll, Riordan, Baum – it’s time to make room up on that shelf of elite writing goodness for another author. Scoot over. It won’t hurt. James Gough, take your place. His new novel, Cloak, is a classic, an eminently readable, interesting, extraordinary book. If you’re like me, you’re already imagining a movie. But I digress.

I just can't wait any more. I HAVE to share this with you! Last month, I read THE best YA book I've ever read. The book, Cloak, is about enchants, travel, the magic of life, eating (Spam, or bugs, or...), friends, growing, learning, BEING.

I've got an extraordinary project to share with you today. Books of Hope is a program where schools in the U.S. can work to create books for their sister school in Uganda. There's nothing like a book to change a life - and Books of Hope is changing many, many lives.