I went into reading this expecting a typical travel memoir filled with humble-brag type adventure stories. Instead it is much more, an honest, behind the filter peak into the realities of long term travel. Social media shows us all the glamour and romance of traveling but never the difficulties, and that’s what Matt has done with this memoir. From his first intimidating but life changing trip to Costa Rica to the inevitable loneliness that comes from a life without permanency, to feelings of inadequacy and career/responsibility driven anxiety, this book is REAL. The most important part of this was his acknowledgment that it is not only okay and even necessary to come home, but that putting down roots doesn’t have to mean the end of adventure. Life is what you make it. Finishing the book you realize it was a sort of epitaph for his days as Nomadic Matt, and a rebirth of Matt Kepnes.

Ten Years a Nomad by Matthew Kepnes is a great travel book . It is a discussuion of Kepnes early thinking about travel and the transition of though and practice he experiences. Such wonderful insight into the nomad way of life as well as profound adventure, opportunities, and exploration. I enjoyed this read. Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.


Actual rating is 3.5

While I generally enjoy travel books, I must say I found this a little dull and much more about the author than the places he visited. One thing which really puts me off travel books is when the author implies that others are mere 'tourists' while the 'traveller' is somehow superior, and I did get something of that from this book. It will perhaps be more interesting to those who already know the writer from his blog, which I didn't.
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

This was fantastic! It was like going on the adventure myself while reading Kepne's words. I found it truthfully informative and engaging, and a beautiful story!

I found Ten Years A Nomad to be an interesting read. I love to travel and often think about quitting my job like Matthew and traveling the world. I appreciated Matthew’s honest opinion and his description of the not-so-glamorous aspects of being a nomad. I don’t know if I’ll start my life as a nomad anytime soon but I will certainly be re-reading this book and recommending it to any of my friends that are filled with wanderlust!

Travel is about exploring other places than the familiar. It's about exploration, discovery, trying new foods, meeting new people, seeing new and different landscapes.

Author Matthew Kepnes feels stuck and out-of-place in the world he was raised. Slow to make friends and join in, he never quite connected with schoolmates, inside or outside of school. Set on a path of working in insurance, earning his MBA, Matt decides to save money to take a 2 week vacation outside of American culture. Upon his return he realizes that will be his life; a 9-5 job in corporate America, working for that two-week vacation each year. He settles on a plan and begins planning an extended trip around the world for a year. His parents and friends are fearful for his safety - "they don't like American's there" but Matt plans on, quitting his job, researching destinations, figuring out ins and outs before he begins. Once the adventure starts, Matt realizes his careful plans are pretty much out the window as he reaches his first destination and his life travelling begins.

This is an honest exploration to life "on the road" to destinations unknown by so many of us. Matt travels the world, meets fellow travelers, makes friendships, romances, and a plethora of memories. He experiences doubt and burn-out, has a great deal of fun, and comes to know himself through it all. I appreciate his raw, real accounting of the ups and downs of being an American in far off reaches, but mostly as being a nomadic individual searching for his own answers to life's questions.

Part travel log, part "adventurer's guide", this is a book that makes one desire to journey into more of what life has to offer.

For those who might want a little push to leap from ordinary life, organize a small backpack, and venture out to explore the world without a return ticket: this book might change your life! The author has an extensive online presence as NomadicMatt. Part soul-searching and part how-to, this memoir encourages those who are fortunate enough to have a choice to set off on a journey. Rating *** because he experiences travel as a white man of some means, and this bias is implicit in all descriptions. With ten years of travels, I wish the author would at least anecdotally mention some of the hassles that his girlfriends, LGBTQ friends, multiracial friends likely encountered in some of the countries visited. I am more interested to learn about socio-economic-political vibes that likely impacted him and/or friends while they were protected by their passports and ability to buy transport to the next destination. Matt's journeys happened in the 2000s and I wonder if/how at all the author was impacted by Sept 11 and all that has come after. How did meeting those without privilege impact his travels, his life, his purpose? How was his itinerary interrupted/decided based on political/economic/cultural tensions?
That's my reason why only ***.

I received a copy of this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Travel is the art of discovery. That line towards the end of the book stuck with me. I like to travel but sometimes am hesitate because of various excuses.. I don't know the language, It is so far away, too expensive. The list goes on and on. Maybe I will start to take his advice more and just go.

While Matt talked about how travel can be done frugally, the main thread of this story was how travelling, near or far can make you grow as a person, learn about the people and cultures of where you visit.

While this book won't win any awards for the writing, it was written with his experiences and I felt like it was well told.

This is a wonderful story about a young man who travels the world for 10 years on a very limited budget. It a a good read for anyone interested in travel.

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

This was pretty well done. I got more detail than I wanted at time, but that detail also provided more context and meaning. This is non-fiction so while not high-action, is was mostly engaging. I enjoyed the life lessons shared and to see his growth. Recommended for a decent travel log.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

A thoughtful look at the traveling world of a young man who embarks on this walking journey.He openly shares hi thoughts his anxieties.Traveling as only someone young can youth hostels meeting strangers who become friends.Perfect book to give to young people starting on their own journeys #netgalley#st.martinsbooks

I truly enjoyed this memoir. It was jam packed with information and great life advice. A little repetitive at times, but overall I would recommend this book.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!

To me more of a story of how he came to becoming a traveller and some stories of his travels and how he came to be Nomadic Matt. I find it funny that he mentioned in one of his stories that in his travels he seem to meet Canadians - as a Canadian myself I found myself let out a slight giggle/smirk. It is nice to see that a know traveler put story to page for readers to see how their new career happened to come.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but it is mine. I feel like this book could have been a blog series instead of a full-length book and it would have been easier to read. There's a lot of repetition and the transitions between travel stories and reflection were kind of choppy. Three stars is generous. I received an ARC from NetGalley.

I love to travel! If you follow me on Instagram, you will see that I always take hundreds of photos from where ever I go so I can have fun editing them and looking at them again. I love going to a new place and experiencing life away from home. I love the anticipation of going on a trip, the last few days leading up to an adventure. I look at travel photos from around the world and imagine what each place is like.

Ten Years a Nomad by Matthew Kepnes captured my interest right away because of the topic- travel. Have you ever wanted to travel around the world? Do you find that you care less about having “things” and more about having experiences? Then this book is for you.

Check it out:

New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day, Matthew Kepnes knows what it feels like to get the travel bug. After meeting some travelers on a trip to Thailand in 2005, he realized that living life meant more than simply meeting society’s traditional milestones, such as buying a car, paying a mortgage, and moving up the career ladder. Inspired by them, he set off for a year-long trip around the world before he started his career. He finally came home after ten years. Over 500,000 miles, 1,000 hostels, and 90 different countries later, Matt has compiled his favorite stories, experiences, and insights into this travel manifesto. Filled with the color and perspective that only hindsight and self-reflection can offer, these stories get to the real questions at the heart of wanderlust. Travel questions that transcend the basic “how-to,” and plumb the depths of what drives us to travel — and what extended travel around the world can teach us about life, ourselves, and our place in the world.

Ten Years a Nomad is for travel junkies, the travel-curious, and anyone interested in what you can learn about the world when you don’t have a cable bill for a decade or spend a month not wearing shoes living on the beach in Thailand.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book. Because of it I heard of the author the very first time. I checked out his website and was even more fascinated by his life travelling the world for ten years, his experiences, the people he met and how it changed him. The book shows what really is important in life. I definitely will recommend this book to my friends and family. And to you reading this review

Wonderfully conflicted on this book. Wasn't familiar with NomadicMatt, but the premise of the book interested me. I'm very glad I read it, even though I'm not sure I'd fully recommend it. I would have preferred more about the places and less him narrating about himself, but that was probably poor research on my end before selecting this book. So if you're looking for a traditional travelog, this isn't it.

There's a lot of Matt in me, and me in him. In fact we both set off around the same time - him to Prague/Italy and me to Australia in late 2004. I'm not quite two years older than Kepnes, but that feels a lot larger at 23/25 than it does now. While he eventually grew out of the drink and smoke until dawn and sleep the day away backpacker phase, that never appealed to me. But I fully agree with him about sometimes you fall in love with a place instantly and end up chasing ghosts to recapture that magic, and other times a city never grabs you. Bangkok to him is Sydney to me.

While I eventually "grew up" and outgrew the hostel world, I don't think I'll ever stop traveling. I do wholly understand the burnout he faced. It hit me after a stint in Prague, and I knew it was time to come home from Japan round one. I also understand the feeling that so much has changed when you go "home", except it hasn't. We travelers have. I never experienced the frustration he did with friends when talking about his trip, but I didn't try to have those conversations. Just as "Hey I work FT and just bought a new house" didn't wow me, I wouldn't expect "I taught in Prague these last couple months" to wow them. I also never really felt the "American Dream" pressure that he did where traveling didn't fit as well. I don't see my two weeks vacation as a trade off for the rest of the year, it's about balance.

The other big difference between our experiences was technology. The iPhone changed his travel life - he couldn't commit to a sailing trip to Colombia because he couldn't stomach the thought of being offline and missing something. I traveled with a laptop, but relished being off line. It was the best of both worlds in that I could journal my trip, but it wasn't my line of work so it didn't tether me. Backpacking in an era of smart phones would have been very different for me. At the same time, he lamented losing touch with travelers and a portion of my Facebook is friends I met once upon a city ago. Diff'rent strokes.

Most of my challenges with the book were subjective, but the one issue I really had was the timeline. This book is organized into rough themes and isn't a chronological account of his time. Because he visited some cities multiple times, it wasn't always clear when in the timeline of his life a particular story was so it was hard to contextualize the point of the story. Similarly, he might reference writer Bill under one theme, but he didn't introduce him as Bill Last Name until later. I immediately recognized Scott Dinsmore's story though.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this.

This book really has the potential to change your life. I live to travel and would like nothing more than to escape the 9-5 and jet off around the world. The next best thing is this book. from a reluctant traveler to nomad I was hooked from the beginning. After the second chapter I had been online and booked open ended European train passes for me and my children for the holiday time - I was truly inspired to grasp life as it comes and go. And not just to travel to see a new country but to experience travel - to meet people, get into the culture, immerse myself and my children, to really learn about the world we live in - the reality of the world and not the perceived threats. I really enjoyed the style off writing and felt i was there with Matthew. An excellent read for the armchair traveler . but don't be surprised if you end up somewhere you weren't expecting!

“The road is and always will be a place of wonder and endless possibility. It’s where magic happens. But you can find wonder and magic wherever you are. You just have to look closely enough.”

I enjoyed the journey Nomadic Matt takes us on. His experience and love of traveling is evident. I loved reading his take on places I have visited in the past and also highlighted and added new places to my ever growing list of places I want to visit. I also appreciate his honesty and struggles he encountered while traveling.

“Did I come here to work or did I come here to drink wine?” This might single handedly be the best line in the entire book. It was a wake up call for sure. As a person who loves to travel, I always have my phone in hand to check emails and “multitask” while on vacation. I’m guilty of documenting everything on social media instead of just living. I read this and realized that when traveling, I’m not only doing myself a disservice, but also my family. Instead of making memories, I’m trying to meet a deadline with my toes in the sand. So thank you Nomadic Matt for this wakeup call. And thank you for sharing your struggle with anxiety and your journey home. Anxiety is something many people struggle with on a daily basis and it’s refreshing to read his honesty on not only having it, but how he addressed it.

“Here’s the thing about trying to escape: Your feelings come with you. They sew themselves into the nooks and crannies of your backpack and hang there like dead weight, digging into your shoulders as you carry them from one beautiful place to the next.”

I enjoyed reading Ten Years a Nomad and highly recommend it to anyone that loves to travel or has been bitten by the travel bug.

I had never before heard of Nomadic Matt. I had never read his blog. My interest in this book was piqued by my own present state of perpetually being on the move. My wife and I spent a lifetime together working, raising a family, and taking far too-short vacations. However, for the last fifteen years we have owned a small, rustic cabin in northern Michigan and spent all of the last eight summers there. Our adult children visited frequently and we had some of the greatest times of our lives together. But last summer we sold our cabin, as well as our home in Florida, and together hit the road.

"...The lesson is that travel is all about seizing the opportunities in front of you⸺especially when they’re opportunities to throw away your plans…"

For the last year my wife and I, and our dog, have been traveling and living full-time in our 18.5’ travel trailer. It has not all been peaches and cream, however the trip has been worth the price of admission. We have yet to run into an “opportunity” to “throw away our plans” as Nomadic Matt encourages, but are certainly open to it.

"...The real secret to life is that you get what you want when you do what you want…"

I couldn’t agree more with Matt’s words of wisdom. And to seek out what it is you want. For most of us, perhaps, we do not know what exactly that is. Matt Kepnes certainly does a lot of tiresome explaining and lecturing, and based on his personal experience obviously feels he knows something others do not. Unfortunately, the last third of his book became a bore. I was expecting more from a veteran of ten years on the road. Instead, what I got was not what I wanted.

"...It may seem scary just throwing yourself out there and talking to strangers, but we are all strangers in a strange land..."

Something in life eventually forces you settle down. Either poor health, old age, a loved one needing you, or even the simple desire to lovingly tend a garden once again. Matt’s story is not unique. It is possible a younger person will discover something in this book to help guide them. But for me, I am not sure I learned anything I didn’t already know. And have no need to explain.