Leave the Driving to Us

Back in the ’60s I was stuck in New York with my new wife desperate to get back to L. A. to set up our new apartment and get back to our college educations. We had to take the bus: the airlines were all on strike that summer. So we packed light and jammed our suitcases in the bowels of a Continental Trailways bus that would deliver us to southern California in only 81 relaxing hours.

Actually, when your feet swell and your lips chap; when the potty stinks and the windows freeze; when it’s barely light enough to read yet much too bright to sleep; when the whirring tires drone on between sudden jarring bumps; when a rest-stop hot dog is not hot and neither is the coffee; where endless miles of corn are met by endless miles of more corn; is it really relaxing?

Well, we survived and now I realize that much of this ordeal occurred on the Lincoln Highway (we transferred in Salt Lake to a less-appreciated conveyance heading south). I wonder how reading Towles’s novel, The Lincoln Highway, will compare?

Note also that the following titles were suggested last month: look into them; maybe read a few. let me know.

06-01-22 – “I” Is for Innocent — Sue Grafton
06-02-22 – Pollak’s Arm — Hans von Trotha
06-03-22 – Afterparties — Anthony Veasna So
06-04-22 – Mecca — Susan Straight
06-05-22 – French Braid — Anne Tyler
06-06-22 – Imaginable — Jane McGonigal
06-07-22 – Off the Edge — Kelly Weill
06-08-22 – Clipbait — Kelly Weill
06-09-22 – Conspiracy — Michael Shermer
06-10-22 – The Honorary Consul — Graham Greene
06-11-22 – Killing Floor — Lee Child
06-12-22 – Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand — Helen Simonson
06-13-22 – When We Cease To Understand the World — Benjamin Labatut
06-14-22 – Dante: A Life — Alessandro Barbero
06-15-22 – Metro 2033 — Dmitry Glukhovsky
06-16-22 – Searching For Robert Johnson — Peter Guralnick
06-17-22 – The Pull of the Stars — Emma Donoghue
06-18-22 – With Teeth — Kristen Arnett
06-19-22 – I Was the President’s Mistress!! — Miguel Syjuco
06-20-22 – The Candy House — Jennifer Egan
06-21-22 – The Reality Bubble — Ziya Tong
06-22-22 – Exact Thinking in Demented Times — Karl Sigmund
06-23-22 – We Do What We Do in the Dark — Michelle Hart
06-24-22 – Notes on an Execution — Danya Kukafka
06-25-22 – The Making of Incarnation — Tom McCarthy
06-26-22 – Recitatif — Toni Morrison
06-27-22 – The Joy of Science — Jim Al-Khalili
06-28-22 – The Mother — Maxim Gorky
06-29-22 – The Best American Noir of the Century — James Ellroy