Some Camino de Santiago Readings

There are many, many worthwhile books, not to mention articles, on the Camino de Santiago in English and a vastly larger number when other western European languages are added.  I am only including works in English, and this is a tiny sample of the works I have found interesting or useful. At some point I may post a more comprehensive bibliography and "webography'," but this is a start.

I. Books on the History and folklore of the Camino.

Melczer, William. 1993. The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela. New York. Itaklica Press. ISBN 0-934977-25-9. This is a translation of Book 5 of the Codex Calixtinus "The Pilgrims Guide to The Road to Santiago" by Amery Picaud along with extensive notes and comments. Melczer's book is essential reading for anyone with an serious interest in the Camino.

II. Guidebooks for Walking or Bicycling the Camino de Santiago.

There are numerous guides in all major Western European languages, and even some in minor tongues like Swedish and Norwegian, with practical information on walking or bicycling the Camino. The best of them are frequently updated. As is often the case with travel guides, the most thorough and informative are the ones in German. The most useful ones in English are updated annually and published by the Confraternity of St. James. I am not listing guidebooks here, but if you are interested in actually walking or bicycling the route or a part of it please contact me for suggestions. I am not presently aware of any books for someone who wants to traverse the distance by mule, donkey or on a horse.

III. Sightseeing Guides

Gitlitz, David M. and Davidsohn, Linda Kay. 2000. The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook. New York: St. Martins. ISBN 0-312-25416-4. Compiled by a University of Rhode Island professor of Jewish studies and his wife, this guide is now out of print, a little outdated, and of dubious reliability in places, but it is the most comprehensive guide to sights along the route available in English. If you are able to read Spanish, French, German, or Dutch there are are much better cultural guides available in those languages.

Jacobs. Michael. 2002 (2nd edition). The Road to Santiago de Compostela. London: Palas Athene. ISBN 1-873429-42-8. An essential, and transportable, book for anyone interested in the marvelous architecture on the road to Santiago.

IV. Pilgrim Experiences.

Many pilgrims, beginning with Amery Picaud in the Middle Ages, have written fine books on the experience of walking the Camino. Here is a small sample of ones I find worthwhile (there are many others).

Starkie. Walter. 1957. The Road to Santiago. London. John Murray.  Long out of print, this is my sentimental favorite book in this category for Starkie, a well-known writer in the 1950s and 60s, made the trek long before the modern infrastructure became available. A little hard to find but well worth reading!

Bentley, James. 1988. The Way of St. James: A Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. London. Pavilion. ISBN 1-85793-002-9. Another work by a pilgrim who wrote prior to the recent popularity of the Camino, Bentley offers some sense of walking when it was still difficult.

Hitt, Jack. 1994, 2005. Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route Into Spain. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-6111-9. Reading this book along with Ellen Feinberg's listed next convinced me that a walk to Santiago was possible and quite possibly enjoyable too. A former New York Times reporter, Hitt makes his account both informative and humorous.

Feinberg, Ellen O. 1989. Following the Milky Way: A Pilgrimage Across Spain. Ames: Iowa State University Press. ISBN 0-8138-0146-X. See note for Hitt. Feinberg (now Ellen Aviva) received a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Princeton for work done on the pilgrimage and has subsequently written several interesting works, including at least one novel, with Camino themes.

Moore, Tim. 2005. Travels With My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago. New York: St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-32082-5. As the subtitle might suggest, Moore tries very hard to be funny and does not often succeed, but he does have some interesting observations about travelling the Camino with an animal. In the Middle Ages it was common, but today it is rare and difficult.

Rudolph, Conrad. 2004. Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73127-8. This brief book with some lovely photographs written by a Professor of Art History at the University of California, Riverside received less than glowing reviews, but I find it readable and interesting.

V. Two Toxic Books--Fantasy Fiction on Camino Topics--and a Strange Book.

Two figures of popular culture have written works on the Camino that have served to attract countless "pilgrims" as the books report on experiences that informed commentators suggestwere unlikely to have happened and should cause both books, not just Coehelo's, to be categorized as fantasy fiction in libraries and bookstores.

Coelho, Paulo. 1992. The Pilgrimage. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-7225-3487-6. The Brasilian writer famous for several fantasy novels claims to have walked part of the Camino and this is his report. Informed sources suggest that the book is a novel with few, if any ties to actual experience, and most bookstores sell it as a novel. It has served to attract huge numbers of Brasilian pilgrims to the Camino

MacLaine, Shirley. 2000. The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit. New York: Pocket Books. 

The dancer and actress claims to have walked the Camino with, it is reported, a camera crew complete to costumers and make-up artists as well as an advance publicity team, a crew so large it was nearly impossible for others to walk at the same time (in contrast to a pilgrimage by the actor Martin Sheen who walked alone and nearly incognito around the same time). Upon completion of the route, she returned to produce a film and this fantasy novel about the Camino. This vile book has, in its turn, attracted hordes of "new age pilgrims" to the Camino.

Nooteboom, Cees. 1992. Roads to Santiago. New York: Harbourt Brace. ISBN 0-15-100197-9. Often mentioned as a potential Nobel laureate in literature, the Dutch writer (whose family name translates as "Nut Tree") has produced what is for me a profoundly unsatisfying book on his personal journey to Santiago, one made by car and covering most of Spain. The book has been well-received and has been influential in the recent surge of interest on the Camino, though it is a decidedly unusal take on the topic of the pilgrimage to Santiago.

If I can find time sometime soon, I plan to post a list of websites on Camino topics. Meanwhile the Confraternity of St. James website noted above is an excellent place to start if you want to engage in a web seach on the subject.