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Road Trip Recap and Book Haul

Chris Wolak
Just over a week ago I posted that I was going on a road trip and was so proud of myself for checking out audiobook versions of some titles that are on my current TBR Action Center. The Girl on the Train, A Moveable Feast, and My Reading Life.

I rented a car for this trip because my car has recently become unreliable. We’re looking to eventually replace my car with a small SUV. On vacation earlier this year we rented a Jeep Patriot. It was nice to have such an extended test drive, so for this trip I rented a Fiat 500x. It was comfortable and handled well, but there was one tiny problem.

Fiat 500x white rental
Fiat 500x claims up to 34 mpg highway, but during my trip it never went over 27 mpg.

The drive started with bookish podcasts. Books on the Nightstand, The Readers, Literary Disco. It was smooth sailing through CT, NY, NJ. After I ran out of new podcast episodes, it was time to crack open an audiobook. I had the disc in hand, looked at the dashboard, and it was then that I realized there was no CD player. Whaaa? Doh! Technology.

My car is a 2004 VW with a cassette deck and a CD player. I know cassette players are a thing of the past, but I thought CD players were still standard. Apparently not. Hello smart phone revolution. Anyway, I gazed at the dashboard for a few seconds, rather at a loss, before laughing about the situation. So much for the audiobook plans.

No CD player here, grandma!

I listened to some music. Turning on the radio in NJ meant lots of Billy Joel and similar. When I got to the hotel that evening I revived my Audible account, but never got around to downloading a book for the next leg of the journey. I like podcasts and some radio, but I also like quiet, too. But, man, I wanted to listen to The Girl on the Train!

The primary reason for the trip was to attend Induction Day at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. This is the day that incoming freshman get sworn into the Navy and then go through a six week boot camp like experience called plebe summer. I have a young friend who invited me to attend the festivities of his induction. I-Day, as it is commonly called, is a day of events for family and friends while the plebes are being processed. The day ended with the Oath of Office ceremony at 6pm. There were some tears and lots of misty eyes as loved ones and parents said goodbye to their sons and daughters. (Women make up 28% of the class of 2020, the highest percent to date.)

At the museum bookstore I bought a copy of Reef Points, the midshipman handbook that plebes memorize over the summer. I admire the small size of this book–about 3.25″ x 5″–which makes much more sense than the bulky 6.5″ x 8.5″ Guidebook for Marines that I lugged around in boot camp (and which I think is still the same size for Marine recruits). Makes me wonder if officers might be a tad smarter. Or, if I were to put on my enlisted cap, I’d say it’s more evidence that officers do indeed have it cushier. 😉
Oath of Office, or swearing in, ceremony. Good luck, class of 2020!

Next I headed about 50 minutes down the road to DC to meet up with book blogger friend Thomas of Hogglestock. It was great to see him again and meet John and Lucy. If you read Thomas’s blog you know he’s been doing a shelf-by-shelf series about the books in his library, so it was neat to see his collection in person.

With Thomas in his library.
And I scored a few books from his library. (To clarify: Thomas gave them to me, I didn’t steal them. Although it might have been fun to steal one and see how long it took him to notice. I had friends that did that to me once when I moved. They each snuck a book out of a box and were waiting for me to eventually start wondering aloud what happened to certain books. Back then I was hyper anal about organizing my books. Unpacking and shelving my books was traditionally the first thing I did when setting up a new apartment. That time I was too busy with a new job and broke from tradition. They started asking not so subtle questions about my books and soon the cat was out of the bag. It ended up being funny for all of us).

Anyway, the books Thomas gave me are:

The duck is from Politics & Prose…Thomas bought it for me…should I name it Thomas?
  • Shadow of a Man by Mary Sarton
  • Spiderweb by Penelope Lively
  • The Sure Thing by Merle Miller
We eventually headed over to Politics & Prose for a browse and lunch. We started off downstairs, in their excellent remainder section, where we both found goodies. Then headed upstairs to the fiction section. I would’ve loved to have spent a couple hours browsing, but also wanted to make it home before midnight.

My stack:

I was planning to limit myself to 4 or 5 books, because, you know, space/time/money, and ended up with 7. Not too bad. Plans never seem to work out, exactly, when books are involved, do they?
  • Hotel De Dream by Edmund White — top two recommended by Thomas.
  • Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron 
  • The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen — for The Readers summer readalong.
  • Women Crime Writers, The 1940s by Sarah Weinman — have had my eye on this two book collection from The Library of America since before it came out last year.
  • Women Crime Writers, The 1950s by Sarah Weinman
  • A Small Circus by Hans Fallada — have wanted to read more Fallada since reading Everyman Dies Alone in 2010.
  • Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser — for the Australian Woman Writers Challenge
You can check out Thomas’s stack here.
Summer reading!

My drive from DC back to CT on that Friday before the 4th of July actually wasn’t that bad. I took a route through rural Pennsylvania that Thomas recommended and enjoyed the countryside. Some torrential downpours in NY slowed me down, but the drive took about nine hours. I had feared it would be more.

I did read The Girl on the Train over Independence Day weekend and loved it! Looking forward to the movie, which comes out in October.

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