Road trip reading

View in The Strand

Okay, so my husband (we'll call him Chef, because that's what he is) and I just got home from a 7 week road trip around the country. We hit New York City, Philly, Asheville, Nashville, New Orleans, Houston, Tucson, San Francisco, Portland...others...It was kind of epic. It was a lot awesome. It's been an adjustment getting used to being home again. It's nice to have a bed. And privacy. And cats.

But it's hard not to miss it. How often as adults do we get to have that kind of freedom? It was great not to think about jobs or bills or, for the most part, grocery shopping, for almost two months.

What does any of this have to do with books? Welp, here's a thing about my book habits: I'm a library person. My mother was a librarian for 35 years, I've always had a library card, always used it. Who has the money to go around buying books all the time?

Okay, so you know how, when you're on vacation, the normal money-spending rules kind of cease to apply?

Yeah. We bought 35 books on this trip. (Just because we had sooo much extra room in our car. Not.) We couldn't help it! I don't know if you know this, but there are some damn fine book stores in this country. And we only made it to a few. The stand-outs, for those of you keeping track, were: