Saturday, April 23, 2011

Road Tripper, Radio On!

I recently realized that many of my favorite reads are “road” books. My love for road books probably stems from my love for travel. I enjoy motion.

Some of my favorites:
Travels with Charlie—John Steinbeck
On the Road—Jack Kerouac
The Hobbit—J. R. R. Tolkien
Lonesome Dove—Larry McMurtry
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—Robert Pirsig (I can’t tell you how many years it has been since I read this book and yet I still debate with Phaedrus on road trips).

Books for experiential enhancement:
I often choose books to read on vacation based on where I am travelling. For example while trekking in Nepal I read Annapurna by Maurice Herzog… in a word: harrowing. While in the Cook Islands I read the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy: Mutiny on the Bounty, Men at Sea, and Pitcairn’s Island… in three words, egomania, ick, and megalomania. After being shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the arteries of a really important smart guy and submarining toward a deadly blood clot in his carotid artery, I read Fantastic Voyage… Okay, you caught me, I never read Fantastic Voyage. I would have, had I not been so busy fighting off white blood cells and helping Raquel Welch apply her mascara.



What are your favorite road books?  







Munk's opening line (the kids helped me write this one)...
Technology stole my grandmother’s underpants. 
Munk's "Opening Line" is yours to keep, use it. Munk
This week’s music:
Jonathon Richman and The Modern Lovers: Roadrunner 



Happy Birthday Audrey.