I've mentioned to a couple of people lately that I haven't felt like reading fiction all that much lately -- I think it's a reaction to the concentrated dose of fantasy earlier in the year during my WFA reading -- and that I keep picking up perfectly good novels and saying "I don't want to read about pretend people" and putting them back down. And so I've been reading a number of books like this -- either reportage or less-categorizable narrative nonfiction. (Though I am hoping the World Fantasy Con will jump-start my enthusiasm for fantasy -- especially if I can find a copy of Charlie Stross's The Jennifer Morgue, which should have been published by now, and which I'll probably want to give its publisher real cash money for if I ever manage to see it.)I came to Cross Country from Sullivan's bestseller Rats, which I read last year and really enjoyed. This one isn't bestseller-bound, I think: it's the story of a cross-country trip with his family (wife, two kids) home from a family wedding, interspersed with various digressions about past similar trips (his own and others) and The American Road in general. It's the kind of thing that could easily become pretentious, but Sullivan has a nice naturalistic voice, and is quite willing to make himself the butt of most of his jokes.
The other notable thing about this book is its subtitle: Fifteen Years and Ninety Thousand Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant. Long, quirky lists within the text of a book often annoy me, but, confined to a subtitle, I love them.
The Fabulous Book-A-Day Index!
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