Next year's summer holiday is all wrapped up: I'll be on a 14-day trip on the Trans-Siberian Express to the Arctic Circle with Paul Theroux. There's only the little matter of the price – tickets start from $12,795, but some things are worth saving up for.

Some cynics are expressing their doubts over Theroux's suitability as on-board entertainment (recent reviews described him as "pungent with self-regard" and "a parody of a grumpy old man", but trip director Kevan Cowie is unbowed: "I've spoken with three different people who've been on trips with him or have had personal experience with him who said they thought he'd be wonderful on the trip," he tells sceptics.

For those unwilling to shell out thousands but still keen to get their literary hit on a train, next month the Ted Hughes poetry festival is hosting a "poetry train" with John Siddique and Amanda Dalton: hie thee to the 11:02 from Leeds to Mytholmroyd on October 26. Siddique is confident about his reception: "I've done a reading on a tram in Blackpool before. As long as people know it's a poet giving a reading, it's fine," he tells the Yorkshire Post. "If it's just guerrilla poetry on public transport, it's another thing entirely. It becomes a bit like a busker or a beggar on the Tube," he adds. Let's hope he's given a name badge.

But all this got us to thinking: which author would you least like to encounter on a journey? Jack Kerouac on a sales trip around Rotherham? Ann Widdecombe on a package jaunt to Ibiza? Or maybe Dan Brown on a walking pilgrimage to Santiago de' Compostella?