Three Men In A Float by Dan Kieran/Ian Vince

I didn't even know what a milk float was until I picked up this book - and it isn't really fully described at first, so I did a little Googling to see images and understand.  It's an electric vehicle that was used in the 1950's to deliver milk - there are still a few that exist, but of course our desire for speed and convenience mean that we get our milk from grocery stores or corner shops, and the milk float, in Britain, has for the most part ceased to exist. 

The book is funnier than I thought possible - three men travel (in the aforesaid milk float) at half the speed of a cyclist, from one side of England to the other.  It's narrated in classic British style in a book more hilarious than anything I've read since Round Ireland With A Fridge, which made me laugh so hard in the bookstore I had to buy it to avoid the glares of those working there (in Britain a fate worse than death).

What I loved most about this book was its reminder to enjoy the travel opportunities nearest you (they didn't go to Europe, or America, or somewhere 'exotic', they simply explored their own home country), and to do it in a way that enables you to truly enjoy it.  "It certainly felt as though time had broken free from its normal routine; or perhaps re-established an older meandering one, distinct from the modern rigidity in which most of us find ourselves."  The concept of not being able to go a half a day without a charge (they had to constantly charge up their electric vehicle in odd ways) sounded ludicrous until I realised this is what we do with our phones and gadgets. We stumble into an Apple store, or park ourselves uncomfortably on the floor in an airport, simply to stay connected as we move through our travels and our life.  As the authors of this book and the travelers of this slow journey point out, travel has become "some kind of grandiose box ticking exercise", and I have seen that often enough to know it to be true.  "The world certainly seems to have been reduced to a list of places you 'have to see' before you die, as though merely seeing them gives you any kind of insight or experience from which you can learn something meaningful." I agree with these men that travel - the best travel, the kind that you learn from and grow from and laugh about later - should be slow and unhurried.  If you miss your train, you get another one, or you spend the night in a very dodgy "hotel" flanked by kebab shops and suspicious looking characters, trying to shower in a space smaller than your body, and sleeping on sheets that for some unexplained reason are dotted with a proliferation of cartoon hedgehogs. (True story. Geneva, Switzerland has a lot to overcome the next time I go there. But I tell you, I will never forget it.)

I spent the second half of the book wishing I could start the next book I'd picked up, which is not enviable, and I was tempted to give up this ridiculous effort at staying committed to only one book at a time. But then I remembered that what I've learned from reading Kidnapped and from these three men in a float, is that the best things often result from sticking to your guns and doing what is hardest. Keep reading, I tell myself. You're gaining more than you know. (As it turned out, the book I was so much looking forward to, J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy', was such a great disappointment that I ended up not reading it at all, so there's another lesson for you.)

If you want a really good laugh, definitely pick up this book - if you can find it.  I got it for 59 pence at a charity shop, and my mind and life are the richer for it.