AS HOMEBOUND children, our worlds stretched as far as we could walk. Finding our way to libraries, we discovered horizons reaching as far as we could read, and every book cracked open was like the swinging of a door into the suddenly-imaginable world.

As we grew older and began to travel, books became both companion and compass. We augured our future destinations through travel tomes, bolstered by the breathless words of traveler-friends. We also tucked paperbacks into our hand-carry luggage to make those swiftly shrinking miles even shorter.

Now, the world has never been smaller or more diverse. It doesn?t matter if your taxicab is black (London), yellow (New York) or white (Manila). It doesn?t matter if you read your books from left-to-right or the reverse; if it?s daytime here or on the other side. Friends and other lost items await us in airports, train stations, bus depots and seaports. Yet one can punch a ticket merely by settling into an easy chair and opening any of the following 10 books, among the most potent literary passports to somewhere else.

1. ?Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from The Not-So-Far East? by Pico Iyer: Iyer is our preeminent travel writer. A prolific British writer of Indian descent, he lives in California and Japan and sees the world?s contradictions of old and new as the source of everything magical. ?Video Night? is his best; it includes an evocative piece on 1980s Manila called ?Born in the USA.?

2. ?A Year in Provence? by Peter Mayle: What began as a French sidetrack became a life-changing trip as Mayle, ostensibly in Provence to refurbish a country property, falls in love with French cuisine and custom, evocatively introducing us to the black truffle and the French lunch, in what is the first and most memorable of Mayle?s series of books about Provence.

3. ?Riding The Iron Rooster: By Train Through China? by Paul Theroux: At a time when travel truly was dangerous and each traveler a bonafide adventurer, Theroux answered the staccato song of the world?s trains as he took one after another, chronicling all he saw along the way. The Iron Rooster took him on his strangest journey, and it will take you there as well.

4. ?Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy? by Frances Mayes: The sweeping beauty of the Italian countryside is as much a character in this uplifting, light-hearted memoir as Mayes and her husband try their hand at rebuilding a house and discovering all things deliciously Italian.

5. ?Notes From a Small Island? by Bill Bryson: Prior to returning to the United States after more than a decade of living in England, Bryson, always a concise, humorous and mesmerizing read, winds his way around the island and tells us what exactly is so funny, strange and utterly unforgettable about the Britain he called home.

6. ?Five Years in a Forgotten Land: A Burmese Notebook? by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo: Award-winning writer and teacher Hidalgo writes about pre-junta Burma in an eye-opening volume that exemplifies the otherness of what would become Yangon. Hidalgo?s clear-eyed affection for Burma and its people proves a winning combination.

7. ?Street-Bound: Manila on Foot? by Josefina P. Manahan: An update would be perfect, but this tiny guidebook remains the best company for walking around Manila in search of the familiar and the unexpected; the map and glossary really help.

8. ?Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books? by Azar Nafisi: Of the few inaccessible countries left, Iran may be the most forbidding, particularly for women. In the shadow of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Nafisi dared to secretly lead a group of Iranian women in reading Western classics such as ?The Great Gatsby? and yes, even, the titular Nabokov novel; a portrait of courage in the strangest of lands.

9. ?Twisted Travels? by Jessica Zafra: The acerbic and inimitable Zafra applies her considerable wit and ire on the cities she encounters. Prague, Vienna, Singapore and, of course, Manila are on the itinerary.

10. ?Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story? by Tony and Maureen Wheeler: Perhaps the ultimate traveler?s tale, this book tracks how the Brit couple came to found their Australia-based guidebook empire in a rollicking tale that includes a slim volume called ?the yellow bible,? an inconvenient motorcycle among others in the back story of the company that made the globe a little less lonely. ?