A note on travel readings!

One of the things I always look forward to excitedly when there's a vacation on the horizon is, as my parents used to say, reading until I go blind.

When I was a kid, my folks would go on long road trips every August. My dad still marvels at how my brother and I were, at very young & squirmy ages, able to enjoy 6 hour car rides through the blazing desert in a VW van with no air conditioning and no music. Our secrets to success (I'll give you a moment here to grab some paper and a pen): a blanket hung up to block the sunlight streaming through the windows and stacks of books to pore through. The occasional mother-mandated gaze out the window did little to slow the voracious digestion of stories from every genre, consumed in great quantities. I have a strong memory of driving through Death Valley (DeathValley.com's slogan: "Hot enough for ya?") and getting a bad nosebleed which ruined my brother's Calvin & Hobbes book. I read Heidi in one long jaunt through Northern California and consumed a Danielle Steel book one year when it was the only book the owners of our rented Mammoth condo had left on the shelved. And the picture at the top of this blarg is of me looking for even more books in a used bookstore in Eureka, CA.

Luckily, Mike and I share a love for reading in interesting locales, which is why on our honeymoon we packed a suitcase entirely with books. Our upcoming road trip is going to be a literary adventure as well as a geographical one. And I'm particularly excited because since my last road trip I've developed an appreciation for the rather apropos genre of travel writing.

Working at Borders gave me a different way of thinking about books, especially in terms of shelving locations. So let me point out that the books I'm interested are probably not going to be found in the bookcase at the end of the Travel section, right across from the Natural Healing shelf. My favorite in the genre is The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho (specifically the Sam Hamill translation), and is shelved in poetry. Other than that, there's the Kerouac's classic On the Road and Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage. Need I mention Dave Barry Does Japan? I didn't think so.

What I love so much about these books (besides the deep existential satisfaction of reading a book about travel while traveling) is seeing how people much cooler than I transpose their unique and creative worldviews on new places and situations. It's obvious that no two travelers will get the same experience out of a trip. What's really fascinating to me is how a traveler shapes his destination and his encounter with it. How different Craig Thompson's time in Morocco would have been if he had been writing haiku instead of chronicling his experiences with a sketch book! I read these books and can imagine, even for just a moment, how the authors would have traveled in my world.

So yes, I'm excited to take these fellows along with me as Mike & I roam America. Hopefully they'll chip in some gas money.