Welcome to Litsy!

#NewYearNewBooks #HighwayCvr I really enjoyed this book when I read it years ago. It was a pretty big deal back in the day. Does it hold up ? Not sure , I have lots of new reading to do. 😄

Holiday reading ☀️. Not a bad spot - just need my glass of wine now.

Journeying around the country and hearing some good stories with William Least Heat-Moon.

My July #doublespin. I think I might have enjoyed this more in paper? It was meandering and I kept losing the thread as he was talking. I did enjoy some of the stories, but it was a little uneven. Maybe it just hasn‘t aged well?

I read this book many years ago and decided it was time to revisit it. William Least-Heat Moon recounts his 1978 journey around the country taking the back roads. I read this slowly, enjoying it a little bit at a time and looking forward each day to find out where he was headed next.

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me this quiet but powerful travel log from the back roads of America.

#12booksof2020

I should get a gold star or a cookie or something for finishing this book...and it's really not even that long. It took me FOREVER to get through. But I was determined to do so after hearing so many sing its praises as THE ultimate example of stellar American travel writing. And, after finally finishing the thing, I'm still left wondering: What was the point of that?

I really loved this book. In the late 70‘s Heat-Moon lost his job and his marriage all at once, so he took to the road to see what he could see. His travels took him across the back roads, or blue highways, of the US. Heat-Moon has a knack of getting stories out of a variety of people, and he tells their stories with an admirable lack of judgement. Highly recommend.

Happy Friday Littens!

I am loving this book. It makes me want to get in my car and drive.

My brother shipped this book to me. He found it in the basement of my grandparents' house. I probably came across this book a hundred times when I was younger, digging through their basement books, not knowing it would become such a meaningful gift to me later in life.

I ended up really liking this travelogue from over 40 years ago. Occasionally I would pick up my phone to Google the little towns and see what they're like now (if even still in existence). Yes-- sometimes it got a little slow, but just skim a few pages and I'd end up sucked back in. It reads like a series of blog posts. He hits the region I grew up in and I think he caught the spirit of that region during that time well.

Recovering from another crappy cold, so guess I'll read this tonight. I'm allmost halfway through, it's just ok thus far. He's a good writer, but it can lose steam in sections.

I love to #detour on the “blue highways” and stay off the interstates. #letsTravelJuly @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @OriginalCyn620

#lilithjuly #getoutthemap

One of my poetry professors in college had me read this before my BFF & I took a 7wk cross country road trip on the blue highways. I remember Get Out The Map playing late one night just as we drove into Nashville.

I picked this up based on a reference in another book. A fascinating travelogue written by an English professor in the 1980‘s who adrift at the end of a relationship throws in his job to travel the blue highways (the roads of back country America) in search of authenticity and some answers to his personal issues. A book of encounters with local both kind and eccentric and contemplation on the changing nature of the country and its people

Excellent

This is one of my favorite books. I love traveling down the two-lane highway and exploring. That said I would like to see a book that features an American road trip where the stops would consist of trying out different salons, going to different homosexual communities and shopping for clothes and shoes

#explore
#transformatiom

I would love to spend a few month travelling around America! There‘s so many places I want to see but I‘ve always wanted to go to America ever since I was little. #nfaboutacountryyoudliketovisit #uncannyoctober

I know I've used this book before, but when I thought of #drive this well-loved book came to mind. #anditsAugust @RealLifeReading

I loved this book about America. William Least Heat Moon left his job as an English professor to travel around the US on the back roads - the ones that are blue on the map - and talked to people, getting them to tell interesting stories about their lives. Highly recommended ! #journey #jubilantJuly @RealLifeReading

Hey @diovival the quotes you posted from this sounded so good! And I've got the Calvino book coming in the mail.

@CherylDeFranceschi I'm going to get that book from The Moth as well!

#blameitonLitsy #marchintoreading @RealLifeReading

A bit late but I'm finally finished my slow read! And just in time for Sunday night book club. Moo-Moo was being such book hog.
#recentnonfictionread #marchintoreading @RealLifeReading

Pock-pock went the tarred road cracks. Pock-pock. The day remained dark, showers fell and stopped and came again, the uneven roadway collected water, the van hydroplaned every few minutes. The clamor of wind numbed my ears; the fever made me woozy. Pock-pock. First the highway held me, then it entered me, then I was the highway. Pock-pock, pock-pock. Prairie hypnosis.

"I ate a sandwich at the edge of a deep rift that opened like jaws to expose rocks so far below they were several hundred million years older than the ones I sat on. From the high edge I looked down on the glossy backs of swallows as they glided a thousand feet, closed their wings like folded fans, and plummeted into the abyss. It was a wild, mad, silent, spectacular descent of green iridescence that left me woozy."

#riotgrams Day15: #booksandtreats
Reading is delicious. Enjoying some of my holiday candy and digging into South by Southwest.

"They were more crabs than crates, and the critters kept hopping out of the overfilled boxes like popcorn in a hot skillet. The floor crawled with their oblique scuttles for the nearest dark underside. They scrabbled and clacked, and we crunched them into an agony of yellow ooze as we heaved on the crates. I started shuffling to avoid stepping on them."

#riotgrams Day 2: #whereiread
The daily commute is the perfect time to read. A book also provides a handy physical barrier between myself and any potential creepers.

"After breakfast, I walked the scrupulous simplicity of the old halls. At the front door, a broad twin stairway with a sinuous walnut handrail coiled up to the third story. Generations of hands had polished the wood to the texture of plumskin. Inside one of the white-walled rooms, a woman, forlorn in the quiet economy of things, sat staring numbly through the miasma of her cigarette into the March grayness."

"First night on the road. I've read that fawns have no scent so that predators cannot track them down. For me, I heard the past snuffling about somewhere close."

The route: Eastward, East by Southeast, South by Southeast, South by Southwest, West by Southwest, West by Northwest, North by Northwest, North by Northeast, East by Northeast, Westward.

I love a good road memoir, and this is a great one. Few things are better than an open road, except for the stories you hear along the way. This kicked up my wanderlust and made me want to get back on the road.

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

After some disarray in his personal life, Heat-Moon takes off on a journey around the US. He travels the blue highways - the small roads as opposed to the interstates. He thinks some aspects of American life are vanishing, but a surprising number are still hanging on today, 30 years later. The homogenization of towns is not yet complete. Recommended for anyone who's ever had wanderlust. 🚐🚐🚐🚐 4 camper vans out of 5.

"Dreams take up a lot of space?"
"All you'll give them."

a little before-bed reading - the dog isn't interested in travel stories apparently

Getting back to Blue Highways after a brief hiatus--it's like a conversation with an old friend. I love this book.