Coming to a Barnes & Noble near you

If you happen to be living in a bubble, you may not have heard that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is coming out with a new book on Tuesday, called Go Set a Watchman.

Barnes & Noble is doing a read-a-thon tomorrow, and if you walk into any Barnes & Noble between open and close, you can listen to someone reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

So my Customer Relations Manager and I thought up and AWESOME plan where I visit four B&Ns and read at their read-a-thons!

To be fair, I AM driving home from NY, so I was making this trip anyway, but it's still cool.  So below are the B&Ns I'm visiting with the (VERY) rough estimated times I will be there.

Moorestown, NJ (Between 12-1)
Christiana Mall (Between 3-4)
Belair, MD (Between 6-7)
Tyson's Corner, VA (Around 8-9)

If you can't see me at any of these places, you can follow my adventures on Twitter, @reviewmetwice.  Also, if you see me, take a picture!  #GoWatchaBookseller

Review Me Twice - Carsick by John Waters

So because I am generally out of touch with everything, I had to rad John Waters' bio on the back flap of the book to figure out who he actually was.  But once I did, I recognized him, and I recognized his picture, so I guess at the end of the day, it wasn't THAT embarrassing that I didn't know him by name.

The book isn't entirely non-fiction.  He writes two novellas first, if the trip went as perfectly as it could possibly go and if it went as absolutely horribly as is could possibly go.  I really like that he gives us these two extremes first.  And, honestly, there are grains of truth in both of these novellas.  When you finally get to the actual trip and what actually happened, you see hints of the reality in his novellas, which was kind of cool.

And his writing about his actual trip was neat.  He met some intensely interesting people, who led interesting lives, and really, considering what COULD have happened to him hitchhiking across america, he actually had a lot of good luck in terms of the people that picked him up.

Honestly, as a normal person, I wouldn't try this.  I think a lot of his luck came from the fact that he was John Waters and people knew who he was.  I think that, as a normal person, you may not have that kind of luck.  But it was still an interesting read and, if you're looking to pick up a book about travel writing, this is certainly a good one.

Favorite Travel Books

It never ceases to amaze me, in the course of writing this blog, when I run across an entire genre or subgenre of books I am shockingly unfamiliar with. You'd think, out of all the books I've read in my life, I would have read a few enjoyable books categorized in "travel." But despite all my searching and list-reading and remembering, I don't recall reading very many, and the few I have read, I didn't really like. (See exhibit A, The Museum of Intangible Things, the first one that came to mind.)

But I saw that Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See was on a Goodreads list of "travel books" so I'll roll with that. I haven't finished the book - I picked it up out of curiosity years ago and got really busy so I never got back to it - but I really liked what I did read.

Douglas Adams went to Madagascar with a zoologist to write about what he saw there. He wrote about how beautiful and unique it was, but also how we shouldn't be flocking there to gawp at it because we won't be doing it any favors, because humans are pretty destructive, if you haven't noticed. (Go ask the Galapagos... actually, don't, because you'll be doing more damage than good if you go there, too.) It's classic Adams funny, but also really serious and important.

So is it technically a traveling book?  Well, three out of our four main characters travel.  And the pants themselves, which are also kind of a character too, travel, so I'm going with yes, this is a travel book, if not one in the most traditional sense of the word.

It's a book about four friends who get separated for the first summer in sixteen years.  And not just a little separated: one goes to mexico, one goes to Greece, one goes to North Carolina and the last stays home.  So the pants (that mysteriously perfectly fit these four girls with DRASTICALLY different body types) are mailed from friend to friend, connecting them and keeping a hold on their friendship and making them realize what their friendship is about.  They go through really hard times, and made some huge mistakes, and all four of them do a whole lot of traveling that summer, but inevitably, the pants bring them through it.

The book, really, is about friendship, but it's also about learning how to be a friend when you're not together, and there is a lot of traveling, so it's my favorite travel book.  (Plus the word TRAVELING is right there in the title.)

Excuse me, Where is the Travel Section?

You'd be surprised at how many times a day I hear that phrase.  At least three (down the escalator and go directly to your left.)  And, usually, the person is looking for books to take with them to other countries.  These two are probably the two most popular series for that:

                                

But then why is the travel section so popular?  It's probably one of our most frequented sections in the store, one of the messiest, because so many people spend their time there.  Well, for one, people tend to pick up huge stacks of the books, take them up to the cafe, and look at all the pictures and then leave them there.

But that's neither here nor there.

But there are also a lot of things in the travel section that people don't realize.

There are one of these for just about every major city in the entire world located in the travel section, including the one that you live in.  It's a great reference guide when you want to know great places to eat not only where you live, but where you're going.

And speaking where you live, do you realize that there's and entire regional section in your bookstore?  It has outdoor and sightseeing activities.  It has family friendly events, not to mention a bunch of historical information about all the local towns in your area.  Now, I realize that I, personally, probably have a larger local section than most, due to the fact that Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. are all considered local to us, so they're all housed in our regional section, which is a little abnormal.  But we have local ghost lore and pictorial books, all housed in the travel section.  It's a great way to learn about activities in your area.

There's also the travel writing section, which is where our book this week is located.  It's books ABOUT travel, not books about specific places.  John Waters' book, Carsick, is about how he hitchhiked across america.  A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson is about his travels on the Appalachian trail (in my bookstore under local travel, anywhere else, would be under travel writing).

There are all sorts of things to discover in the travel section (including maps.  Yes, they do still exist.)  So maybe, just take a peek in there next time you visit your bookstore.