BooksFirst - July 2006

Books Read

Roadtripping USA: The Complete Coast-to-Coast Guide to America (excerpts)
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowel

Books Bought

The Washingtonienne by Jessica Cutler
Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley

Comments

Not a particularly illustrious month for me. In my defense, I was on the road for two weeks of it and my major sources of reading materials were AAA Guides and state tourism brochures. The one for Texas was particularly good.

The problem with travel guides, and particularly ones with a scope as idiosyncratic as “road trips”, is that the places they talk about are on some pretty remote roads and rarely exactly on your travel itinerary. I think we only ate at one place listed in Roadtripping USA and that was by accident. We saw the Red Hut (pictured) coming out of the Lake Tahoe area right about lunchtime completely unaware that it was in the book. These books are better as wish-fulfillment entertainment than as practical guides.

In keeping with the vacation theme, I took Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell (the voice of Violet Parr from The Incredibles) with me. Her rambling and frequently discursive tale of an obsession with assassinated presidents is more entertaining than enlightening. She tells more than I ever need to know about Lincoln’s, Garfield’s and McKinley’s killers in here, but the odds of me being able to drop any bon mots into cocktail party conversation are negligible. Her frequent digressions are much more humorous. Also, since I live near DC, reading of some of the locations she visited researching the book is cool in a “I’ve been there” kind of way. I saw the Broadway revival of Assassins a few years ago, and I now consider myself topped out on darkly humorous takes on president killers as I care to be without running the risk of ending up on another Homeland Security watchlist.

The two books I bought were impulse purchases. I have followed the tawdry Jessica Cutler saga from nearly the beginning through Wonkette and other media sources. I realize the thinly fictionalized version probably isn’t very good, but since I felt compelled to buy something besides just a tee shirt at the Tattered Cover in Denver, it fit the bill.

I specifically got my wife to book us a hotel in the Cherry Creek area so we would be close to the main Tattered Cover location only to find out that they had moved the entire store lock, stock, and barrel to a converted theater on Colfax Avenue. This new location makes good use of the uneven floor levels of an old time theater while maintaining a bookstore vibe. They even kept some old theater seats for the reading lounge. Hopefully they have read my cautionary post on bookstores that overexpand.

I love Christopher Buckley’s political satires and when I saw Florence of Arabia, which I knew nothing about, in the discount pile at the local BigBoxOfBooks™ I decided that for $3.99 in hardback, I couldn’t go wrong. It sounds like good light summer reading.

I will try to buckle down for August, but not making any promises. Until then, remember to keep BooksFirst.