Road reads

While we’re holed up in Suchitoto with some car issues, I thought I’d solicit some reading suggestions. Even though space in the van is tight (and we both have Kindles), there are still a dozen-odd books crammed into the pony. Sometimes you just can’t get what you want to read in e-form…like I lost this Carlos Fuentes book in October and had to order another copy and have it shipped to my mother to bring to me for Christmas. And despite all this trouble, I still haven’t finished it.

Here are most of the books I have read so far on this trip. My reading list is all over the place–just like us!

Longitude by Dava Sobel

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

White Fang by Jack London
Call of the Wild by Jack London
I’ve never read Jack London before! These two titles are so similar but beautiful reads, and wonderful for dog people. I downloaded his short stories and am looking forward to reading those as well.

In Morelia, I got The Prize by Irving Wallace, a novel set around the Nobel Prize, which I found very entertaining.

I bought what I think is a first edition of The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh at a bookstore in San Luis Potosí. I thought it would be pretty boring but I was sort of desperate for something to read and had been intrigued by Lindbergh ever since I didn’t buy a huge hardcover biography that I saw on the shelf back in Baja. This ended up being one of my favorite books of the trip. I couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks. It is fascinating and inspiring to read about how he pulled the trip together, and to think just how far aviation has come in our lifetimes. He’s a surprisingly good writer, too. This summer, when Juan and I visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, we also saw the overlanding vehicle Lindbergh owned with his wife, Anne, a writer. Juan has informed me that Charles Lindbergh was also, unfortunately, a raging bigot. But that, I suppose, is another story.

I picked these up at the bookstore in Oaxaca:
The Best American Travel Writing 2010, edited by Bill Buford I love this series. This one contains a hysterical snippet about Ian Frazier in the foreword that is worth a read, as well as this story that you can read online:
Where Donkeys Deliver by Susan Orlean (I love her, and I particularly loved this piece because when I visited Fes in 2007 with three friends, we named our rental car ‘Hamar,’ which means donkey.)

The Best American Travel Writing 2006, edited by Tim Cahill Another excellent collection that contains this following gem about Dubai, which interested and impressed me because we studied Dubai a lot in urban planning school.
The New Mecca by George Saunders

A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts I absolutely had to buy this book after reading the title, and it completely blew me away. This is really an epic tale about a blind man in the early 1800s traveled all over the world and fell into the company of an impressive list of people. I learned a lot about geography, sailing, and random bits of historical trivia along the way. Loved this book.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Both of these books were at the lending library at the Tepetapan Campground in Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico, and they were both compelling in completely different ways:
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

On the advice of my friend Cian, who is reading a book a week this year, I downloaded The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith. She wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as Strangers on a Train. I’ve never really read noir before, and I enjoyed it a lot, although I did find the ending a little abrupt.

I also searched for a novel set in Guatemala and came up with The Long Night of White Chickens by Francisco Goldman. This book centers around the death of a woman in the early 80s. I don’t usually make a point to read novels set in places where I am, but I am going to try and do it more often. There were all these little details about life that I noticed but would never have attached any meaning to–like paper napkins around cold drinks, which he describes as a sign of class.

Way before we got to Peru, I read The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. This, along with the Fuentes book, and In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin were the three original books I purchased to take along on the trip. I cannot wait until we get closer to Patagonia to read the Chatwin book, because according to Fuentes, Chatwin was one of the greatest writers of all times. Anyhow, The Bad Girl is a great book to read while traveling because it goes all over the place–from Peru to Paris to Japan, and it is a love story…sort of.

I can’t believe I’ve been dragging around that Fuentes book–and now two others as well–without finishing it (and losing it once). I really want to read it and love it but somehow I just can’t, and maybe now that we’ve left Mexico, I’m feeling less motivated. I also have Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, as well as The Roads of Chiapas, but I didn’t realize that Graham Greene hated Mexico and is also a raging bigot in his own right–not to mention exceedingly religious–and so I sort of hate the books. I wasn’t able to finish John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead, either. Just couldn’t do it.

It is nice being able to download so many books and not have clutter, but it’s such a big decision what book I want to pay eight bucks for and not have an actual book, so I do it sparingly. My latest download was The Postman by David Brin. (I came across this because I’m researching postmen for a project and it turns out this isn’t really about postmen at all.) E-books! I love them, but not paying for them. I hate the idea that I can pay for something and not own it enough to pass it along to my mother, lend it to a friend, or trade it along the way.

Who has a book recommendation for me?

Oh, I also finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Mariel Barberry last week. It took me about 200 pages to get into it. But now I’m curious to read the preceding novel, because it takes place in the same building and with some of the some characters.