Fed up with economic gloom? Then turn to the travel bookshelves this summer. Amid the innumerable walking guides and reissued classics is an air of optimism. It’s time to banish the misery and explore — whether it’s rediscovering your own country or following the dreams of the global adventurer.

Where else to start but the very centre of things: grid reference SP240824. Welcome to Meriden, Warwickshire, the middle of England and the starting point of Stuart Maconie’s mischievous romp through many of our backyards, Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England (Ebury, £11.99; buy the book). Meriden’s village green may be unprepossessing, but it is the launchpad for a boisterous quest around the shires to find out what makes up Middle England: is it warm beer and cricket games, or loft conversions and binge drinking? Just as the clichés have elements of truth but stray off the mark, so, too, it turns out, does Meriden’s claim, being not quite true. But what’s a geographical quibble between friends? Maconie eschews sat-nav specifics in his irreverent tour, which takes an affectionate, non-scientific peek into everything from “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” to gastropubs, Midsomer Murders and the English sense of humour.

Tim Robinson’s second book in his Connemara trilogy is a dark beauty amid all the rays of sunshine. The Last Pool of Darkness (Penguin, £9.99; buy the book) refers to the words of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, describing the perfect place for him to think. Wittgenstein stayed in the village of Rosroe, where Robinson begins his trek charting the northwest of Connemara, surrounded by the “torn-up” landscape and murky waters of Killary harbour, which nonetheless “seem to flow riverlike into the sunset”. He walks the ragged shore of Ireland’s Atlantic coast, clambering over everything from fjords to folklore undaunted, evoking the conflicting forces that have shaped the land. Heroes, philosophers and mermaids, sadists, smugglers and fabulists, they all become part of his map. Robinson moves with the light touch of a rambler — always exploring, never damaging the things he discovers. He gets under the skin of the place, and under the land, following the topography as a narrative, an inspiration and, despite the title, an energising source of life. The water may be dark but you will find it difficult to resist.

Shakespeare’s London on Five Groats a Day (Thames & Hudson, £12.95; buy the book) may seem an unlikely travel book but it has discovery at its heart. This refreshing take on a guidebook drops you right in the middle of the capital — but, suddenly, all familiar things disappear. It’s 1599 and you are hitting London for the first time. Have you taken precautions against pestilence, can you tell your inns from your alehouses, and how well-versed are you on the perils of insulting the Queen? From a mountain of information Richard Tames produces a lively, elegantly illustrated and illuminating guide to all things Tudor — a tour of the past that will have you rethinking the present. It’s time travel and it’s fun.

The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads

Choose from a rich haul of novels and thrillers (including two prizewinners) or fill your mind with the sharpest new nonfiction

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• Summer reading: fiction roundup

• Summer reading: children's books

• Summer reading: audio books

• Summer reading

Summer reading

The Sunday Times top 12 choices in fiction and nonfiction

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Summer reading: fiction

A perfect day would start in the winding streets of Barcelona and end with a classic Agatha Christie mystery

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• Erica Wagner chooses her favourite summer books

• David Aaronovitch reviews the best history books for your holiday reading

• Tim Teeman reviews the best books to take on holiday

• Val McDermid reviews the latest thrillers

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• Summer reading for children

• Summer reading: biography/memoir

• Lisa Tuttle reviews the latest science fiction and fantasy novels

• Summer reading: fiction that you loved on vacation

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• Summer reading: music

• Summer reading: outdoors

• Summer reading: travel

• Summer listening: audiobooks

Leaving the safety of more local trips, Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £16.99; buy the book) is a walk on the wilder side of things. Mexico is getting bad press at the moment courtesy of swine flu, so why not make up for it by turning escapist with a cross-country road trip in an Oldsmobile 98? Hugh Thomson invites you into the passenger seat as he finishes off the route he started as a 17-year-old in 1979. It was then, en route to Mexico for the first time, that a fellow passenger told him the way to make a killing was to buy a car in the US and then sell it on in Central America. His fate was sealed, and he embarked on a bumpy journey, getting lost in Mexico and eventually finding his way into Belize. Thomson steers through a series of hair-raising encounters with wit, wisdom and an easy charm that makes you fall for the road trip — and for Central America — at the same time.

On the other side of the world a strange seduction has taken place. Delhi is “a monstrous, addictive city”, says Sam Miller, sizing up the considerable love affair he has had with the Indian capital, in Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity (Jonathan Cape, £14.99; buy the book). He reclaims walking as the best means of exploration, then charges off on a chronicle that rivals its subject matter in energy and scope. Pity his shoes. He lays a spiral on his map, using the shape as a way to discover the city in its fullness, to break from the structures enforced by planners and the rival topographies of wealth and poverty. He moves from the heart of Delhi outwards, starting at Connaught Place, a “pulsating cavern” from which the Metro, the symbol of modern Delhi, shoots out underneath the city. Rather than unravelling, his spiral quickly gathers substance, accumulating rudimentary maps and rough pictures that bolster the strikingly honest tone. His talent is dizzying and his narrative a rich accomplishment. I walked miles in Delhi — without moving an inch.

If this spin through Delhi is too leisurely for you, try heading south until you can go no farther. Adventure comes no more rugged than a Race to the Pole (Macmillan, £18.99; buy the book), where James Cracknell and Ben Fogle battle the elements to beat a tough Norwegian team and conquer Antarctica, almost a century after Amundsen and Scott. Yes, it’s a boy’s book, often written in macho staccato, but who says that girls can’t read it too? The authors have a diehard bond, and their words play off each other well as they take turns narrating their journey in short bursts. They let nothing get in their way, be it frostbite, tragedy or a flesh-eating bug, and, in the end, they . . . well, I’ll let you find out.

For an adventure of a more gentle, accidental sort — and waters that are a little warmer — set sail with Chris Stewart in Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat (Sort of books, £10.99; buy the book). Stewart, whose other incarnations have included drumming for Genesis and joining a circus, is an irrepressible character. When, as a young man, he was asked to skipper a yacht around the Greek islands he quickly and gratefully accepted. He omitted to mention one thing only: he had never been on a boat before and knew nothing about sailing. Witty, self-deprecating and charming, Stewart makes wonderful company even if you do get soaked in the process. It’s a small, easy-to-pack book, with a big heart and a great belly laugh.

My last pick of this summer’s crop comes in succulent green or aromatic black. Carol Drinkwater’s olive farm has already taken her much farther afield than her sun-filled patch of land in the South of France. Her trees have grown into a bestselling series, four books so far, as she has recounted her years learning to cultivate them and then travelling to understand them better. Her last book took her as far as the village of Bechealeh in Mount Lebanon on a mission to trace the old olive trading routes. There, in the war-torn soils, she found two trees, between 6,000 and 7,000 years old. She continues her journey around the Mediterranean in The Olive Tree (Phoenix, £7.99; buy the book), seeking out ancient groves and the lasting traces of olive cultivation in Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Sicily, and searching for clues as to what the future may hold for her own trees, suffering as they are in the grip of pests and climate change. Drinkwater’s passion and curiosity are contagious, and her lively prose holds unexpectedly poetic bursts as well as an insightful account of how the Mediterranean treats a woman travelling alone. You’ll never look at a bottle of olive oil in the same way again.

There is one book that I’ve lugged around with me on several journeys, so instead of choosing Jan Morris’s take on Venice, or a Newby, or a Thesiger as my classic read I want to point you in a different direction. This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson (Headline Review, £7.99; buy the book) is the evocative retelling of the voyage of The Beagle, with the heroic but bedevilled Captain Fitzroy at the helm and a provocative young Darwin as his companion. Even as a paperback, it’s a doorstop, but it’s so gripping and erudite that it’s worth sacrificing other books when you pack. This re-creation of history, discovery and the relationships that sustained those mapping the far reaches of the world will keep you transfixed — and travelling — whether you are stuck in a stinky Tube or en route to the Galápagos.

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