A River Runs Through It
This list is a surprise because it is unintentionally the longest. I didn't intend to collect river books but I think rivers serve a special place for explorers, travelers and story tellers. There's a defined purpose to start at the mouth of the river and move upstream to its source. Rivers have served as the source of religion, mythology, cradles of civilization, and cultural inspiration. For the Greeks, there was the River Styx, which divided the underworld from the world of the living. Mark Twain used the flow of the Mississippi to tell the story of America in Huckleberry Finn . Lewis and Clark followed rivers during much of the Voyage of Discovery. Joseph Conrad used the river of the Congo for the path of Marlow to find Kurtz in Heart of Darkness . Books about rivers have proved captivating for readers and publishers. In making the list, I discovered at least two different series that had been published on ri...