<p>Hi guys. So I have my new Honda SUV purchased, and my new Kindle in hand. Now all I need is a good book to read as I embark on my cross country roadtrip. Besides Jack Kerourac’s On The Road, what books would you recommend?</p>
<p>Not knowing your interests, i’ll suggest a couple of genres</p>
<p>From classics consider:</p>
<p>Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Dangerous Liaisons, De La Clos</p>
<p>American lit:
Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
My Antonia, Willa Cather</p>
<p>Contemporary
anything by Cormac McCarthy
Wapshot Chronicle, Cheever
War Time Lies, Begley</p>
<p>Biography
An American Childhood, Annie Dillard</p>
<p>– of course there is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy everyone’s reading, though I personally thought the first volume was a bit of a bore (minority opinion) and the jury’s still out on volume 2.</p>
<p>Oh sorry - I should clarify that I would be looking for novels with long roadtrips and/or traveling America as a major theme.</p>
<p>American Woman by Susan Choi: A notorious road trip, reimagined.
Read more about American Woman here:
[ReadingGroupGuides.com</a> - American Woman by Susan Choi](<a href=“http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/american_woman1.asp]ReadingGroupGuides.com”>American Woman: A Novel | ReadingGroupGuides.com)</p>
<p>and Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. Sadly, many of the places he chronicled may be even more a thing of the past.</p>
<p>We really enjoyed Angela’s Ashes a number of years ago on a cross-country drive. Also - oddly - Far From the Madding Crowd. Not huge Hardy fans but it was the right price at half-priced books. Held us enraptured for over a thousand miles. God speed!</p>
<p>another kind of road trip: Lonesome Dove by Larry MacMurtry
and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler</p>
<p>There’s always the classic, Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck. A little dated but enjoyable. And of course, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road - not my favorite but it is one of my daughter’s.</p>
<p>Oh, here’s a good one: I See by my Outfit, by Peter S. Beagle.
Crosscountry on motorscooters by the writer of The Last Unicorn.</p>
<p>I loved Lonesome Dove…It’s one of those books that I’m bummed I already read cuz I wish I had that to look forward to, again.</p>
<p>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is another interesting, but different, take on the road trip as metaphor…Obviously Huck Finn is a RIVER trip, but fantastic…</p>
<p>Anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez really lends itself to the feel of travel, just in general, though I am a particular fan of “Love in the Time of Cholera”</p>
<p>And, of course, there is always Walden.</p>
<p>Oh, and the poetry of Wallace Stevens.</p>
<p>i’m supposed to be cooking dinner, but books keep coming to mind:
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Worth it just for the description of the couple’s arrival in Leadville.</p>
<p>Bill Bryson has these books: The Lost Continent which describes his travels across the United States. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid which chronicles life growing up in the 50’s. It is hilarious and he describes some car trips across America. He also wrote : I’m a Stranger Here Myself which is about his life in the US after living in Britain for two decades. He is a travel writer and has written about his travels abroad. I am probably mixing up content from one to another but they are all very funny.</p>
<p>john grisham</p>
<p>The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough</p>
<p>have to add this one before someone beats me to it and makes me hit my forehead:</p>
<p>Huckleberry Finn.</p>
<p>
Voted most hated of all the honors/AP novels required for my kids’ career. Just sayin’…</p>
<p>Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain - his early life working on a riverboat </p>
<p>John Deere: A History of the Tractor (well-written nonfiction)- espec around Iowa</p>
<p>Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes (1930), especially if you drive through Kansas. Hughes’ first novel about African-American family, 1910 Kansas.</p>
<p>Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon (1980’s)</p>
<p>Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck (1960;s)</p>
<p>Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie (Oklahoma and west; dustbowl era)</p>
<p>The Westward Moving House by historian J.B.Jackson (fictional essay about 3 generations of an American family whose sons move from New England to Ohio to the West during the l9th century. The essay, written around l951, it helped me understand the houses and landscapes, why/how people moved westward… although it sounds like you’re driving West to East :)</p>
<p>Will your trip include New England, especially Northern New England (Vt, New Hampshire, Maine)? If so, try: “The Complete and Unabridged Poems of Robert Frost,” or the more pictoral and abridged “Robert Frost’s New England” with selected poems and facing pages of New England scenes that relate.</p>
<p>How about Stephen King’s “The Stand?” That includes road trips.</p>
<p>Great suggestions, p3t. I actually read “LIfe on the Mississippi” while floating down the Mississippi on a converted riverbarge. Incredible experience.</p>
<p>One of my favorite road trip books is Handling Sin, by Michael Malone.</p>
<p>If you are traveling anywhere in the Southwest, I’d look at any Tony Hillerman mystery.</p>
<p>I can’t read in the car for any long period of time without getting a headache. I like books on CD though for a long trip.</p>