Today The Joys of Travel comes out in paperback, making it easy to slip into carry-ons and even personal items.
One of the bookstores I'm going to be reading at next month sent a list of suggestions, most of which were obvious to me but perhaps not to some other authors. My favorite, because I rarely read at readings, was "reading for more than 6-8 minutes at a time is sure to put your audience to sleep."
One of my students told me she was reading my book – this in a course where I didn’t give grades – and asked me if I had a list of all the books that are mentioned in it. I didn’t but, intrigued, I made one yesterday. They number 60, and include everything from Homer’s The Iliad (read in a college course I audited before a visit to Greece) to T.R. Reid’s The Healing of America. The author with the most books referenced is Paul Theroux (5), followed closely by Graham Greene (4). Twenty-six writers appear without their books, from W.H. Auden to Rebecca West. There’s even a mention, in the last chapter, of my previous book. Perhaps my next book should be The Joys of Reading.
The other day I purchased the new biography of Jann Wenner, longtime editor of Rolling Stone, and, unlike probably everyone who’s bought the book, I turned to the index in the back and searched for the name of Jan Morris.
The great Welsh travel writer was a frequent contributor to the magazine in the ’70s and ’80s, writing not about music but about Texas and Istanbul. Travel writing was so big in those years that the premier rock journal of the time found a place for it in its pages. It may say something about the genre’s decline that no mention of Morris appears in the book’s index.
Over the holidays I like to reread a favorite novel. Perusing my shelves the other day I found a title that seemed the perfect one to end this year with: Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies.
As always, the lists of recommended hurricane supplies are omitting books to read when the power goes out. Yesterday I pulled down from my shelves John Updike's Memories of the Ford Administration.