reading lately: travelogues

It's an oft-used metaphor that books can take you on a journey, but lately I've had a batch of books that are a literal as well as a figurative one.

Hotels of North America
Written as a collection of online hotel reviews by one Reginald Morse, a (not-so-successful) motivational speaker who travels the country staying in various, usually cheap hotels. He doesn’t by any means restrict his reviews to comments about only hotels, or only recent stays, also including reviews of places he has stayed in the past and using those to tell the story of his marriage, affairs, and current situation. Some of the reviews offer snarky critiques or amusing commentaries on travel, hotels, relationships, and more, but taken as a whole the collection of reviews explores aging and loneliness in sometimes poignant and even poetic ways. The one in which he talks about how much he misses his child could make me cry just thinking about it – you get so well the sense of how someone could miss a child they don’t get to see enough because of a divorce, but also how a parent can miss so achingly all the moments of their child that have passed. And as a homebody, the one in which he describes all the things that “home” is was spot-on. You can listen to the author read that section in his Fresh Air interview, which is where I learned about (and got very interested in) this book. 3.5/5 stars


The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty
This story starts out with the main character arriving for a vacation in Casablanca, where her backpack with passport and wallet are is stolen while she’s checking in to her hotel - which sets off a whole chain of crazy events, from her assuming another person’s identity to becoming a stand-in for an American actress in a movie being filmed in Casablanca. The whole book is written in the second person (“You arrive in Casablanca”, etc.), which made it quite an interesting change from anything I’ve read recently, and made it really feel as the reader like I was traveling too - getting that sense of disjointedness of starting the day out in your own home and regular life and then arriving that same day in a wholly foreign place. It was a good travel read, but I liked how the chain of events also uncovered the heartbreaking relationships and situations that the character was running away from in making this trip, which made it more of an engaging and emotional read than I expected from just the synopsis. Also learned about this one on Fresh Air. 3.5/5 stars


This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!
In this darkly humorous novel, recently widowed Harriet finds out that her husband entered to win an Alaskan cruise shortly before his death, and she decides to claim his prize, thinking it will reconnect her to him and give her a new lease on life going forward - but little does she know that the trip will really end up forcing her into a revelatory journey into her past, learning that many things about her life were not as she though, in her relationship with her husband and her children. A clever way of structuring the book makes it a travel story of Harriet’s cruise in Alaska in the present, as well as a story traveling through her past life, making stops at specific points in time. In an inventive way, these stops in her past were written in the second person, saying things like “look at you, aged five…” (hence the “this is your life” of the title). An entertaining read with kind of a crotchety old character who might make you think of other great ones like Olive Kitteridge, it’s also a book that’ll make you think about love, forgiveness, and parental relationships. 3.5/5 stars


The Last Days of California
Kind of an indie film-like family road trip with two teenagers and some super square parents who are traveling across the country from Alabama to California in preparation for the Rapture, handing out tracts along the way. There’s no “post-apocalyptic” feel to this book though, as the daughters seem rather ambivalent about this end of the world prediction, and even the father, who is the one pushing this trip, doesn’t seem to particularly believe it’s going to happen. Along with the road trip feel - stops at fast food restaurants and cheap motels, family squabbles, and back-country roads - it’s really a coming-of-age story of an awkward teen who always feels second-fiddle to her prettier older sister. You really feel all the teenage feels with this one: self-consciousness, love/hate relationship with parents, wanting to fit in. Made me think a bit of the emotions and sister relationship of Tell the Wolves I’m Home (but I felt less connected to the characters in this one). 3/5 stars


Four Seasons in Rome
I learned about this little memoir from the fabulous What Should I Read Next? podcast and added it to my list of books to read right away given how much I love the author, Anthony Doerr, from reading his All the Light We Cannot See. In this book he recounts the year he spent in Rome with his wife and baby twin boys, after he was awarded a fellowship to live and work there on his next book (which happens to be All the Light!). The writing is just as excellent and interesting and lyrical here. Doerr makes Rome really come alive in sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and ancient history of the city. I also love how the book reflects other major metaphorical journeys, one being his writing life/process, but the other major one being parenthood. I’m not usually one for nonfiction, so if I’m recommending one, you know it’s worth a read… 4/5 stars