The Best American Travel Writing (2009)

Synopsis
A collection of 25 of the best pieces of American travel writing in 2009.

My thoughts
I love all forms of traveling, from armchair to actual. I have a bunch of these travel anthologies and I'd actually read a few of the pieces in this one before I decided to take it on a trip with me and read it cover to cover. It includes one of my all-time favorite travel pieces, Seth Stevenson's hilarious "The Mecca of the Mouse." Stevenson has been featured in other editions of the Best American Travel Writing series, but this piece remains my favorite.

2008 must have been a particularly strong year for travel writing because this book is chock full of absorbing writing. Strangely, there's a lot of water in this anthology, from a long-distance swimmer flailing around in frigid polar waters to a daughter wading through the river that her father fictionalized in Deliverance, from luxury transoceanic cruises to a maddening trip down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft. There are also excellent pieces on areas of the world that are off the normal tourist's radar - Sudan, Lebanon, Nigeria - and two other stand-out pieces deal with emerging tourist markets - ecotourism in Honduras and safaris in Rwanda. One of the things I love about this series is that the editors make a point of including a diverse array of pieces about all parts of the world from a variety of publications.

My favorites are the ones that make me laugh, and there are some real laugh-out-loud pieces in this collection. "The Mecca of the Mouse" is one, but Chuck Klosterman's "Who is America?" packs a lot of giggles into just a few pages. He asked students at the University of Leipzig to write an essay about which 20th-century American they found the most interesting. "I used to think Richard Nixon and Ryan Adams had nothing in common, but I now realize I was wrong - they both share an equal potential to be randomly fascinating to Germans," Klosterman writes.

Calvin Trillin, superb as always, contributes a piece on the unknown Texas BBQ joint that came out of nowhere to take the top spot in Texas Monthly's coveted rankings. Not being a huge fan of BBQ, I was indifferent when I first started reading, but Trillin hooked me three paragraphs in with his assessment of exactly how hard this shook the world of Texas BBQ: "I felt like a People subscriber who had picked up the 'Sexiest Man Alive' issue and discovered that the sexiest man alive was Sheldon Ludnick, an insurance adjuster from Terre Haute, Indiana."

There were a few misses, though. One writer managed to use the word "dissemble" a record number of times in his retelling of a trip to his old neighborhood in Rome. The piece on James Bond might have been interesting if I had more than a passing interest in James Bond. And I could have done without the piece on airline terminals entirely.

Bottom line
There's something for everyone here.

Fine print
The Best American Travel Writing 2009, edited by Simon Winchester
Genre: travel
Photo by Goodreads
I bought this book

Joe College

Synopsis
A humorous account of the exploits of an Ivy League student from a blue collar background in the '80s.

My thoughts
I read Tom Perrotta's Little People a couple years ago and really enjoyed it right up until the end, a large part of which felt too contrived to me. He's written quite a few critically acclaimed books, including Election and The Abstinence Teacher, but I decided to read Joe College. One of my old college buddies recommended this to me shortly after we graduated. I wish I'd read it then; it would have been a whole lot funnier and I would have been able to relate more. It was still a fun read, but it's disappointing if you read it as anything but quick vacation filler.

Perrotta is at his finest when he's describing the everyday inanities of college dorm life. (One of my favorite scenes involves kids trying kim chee for the first time.) He's less successful when he tries to make his characters deal with issues straight from a teen soap opera. Jonathan Tropper is much better at this; his characters live in something that resembles real life, but he ramps up the absurdity and isn't so damn earnest.

That said, the characters are nicely fleshed out and flawed. Danny, the main character, is a Yale student who finds that his New Jersey working class background makes him a novelty among his privileged peers. But he's also a callow jerk, which made me kind of hate him. I wanted to reach through the pages and throttle him. And that's part of the beauty of the book - Danny is a typical selfish teenager who has mistaken his insulated collegiate bubble for the real world.

Final thoughts
Pass on this one, although Perrotta's worth reading. Little Children was better and I'll read some of his more recent novels someday.

Fine print
Joe College, by Tom Perrotta
Genre: contemporary fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

The Namesake

Synopsis
Gogol Ganguli, first generation Indian-American, struggles with his identity.

My thoughts
It's complicated enough being torn between two cultures, never mind being stuck with a nonsensical name that is from neither. But such is the life of Gogol Ganguli.

Gogol's very traditional parents do their best to stay connected to their Bengali roots while Gogol and his sister do their best to become American. Jhumpa Lahiri does an excellent job describing both sides. It's mostly Gogol's story, but his mother's side of the story is especially well rendered. What this book gets exactly right is its portrayal of a culture that most of its intended audience is not familiar with. Lahiri explains Bengali customs in a way that doesn't seem intrusive or overbearing.

Lahiri's writing is meticulous and her characters are beautifully drawn. The narration is almost photographic; Lahiri describes things that most people don't notice in their own lives. But this hypersensitivity adds an element of unreality. I couldn't tell you how many glasses are in my cupboard and how many are in my dishwasher right now. I'm not even sure what dishwasher detergent I have under the sink - and I just opened a new container yesterday. Lahiri goes on at length about these types of details and while it's beautifully done, it does clog the narrative and puts a barrier between the reader and the characters. This started to get to me around the time Gogol got a girlfriend. Which was about a third of the way into the book. This level of detail was one of the things I loved about Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, and I think it's better suited for shorter pieces.

And I don't know quite what to make of the ending. On the one hand, I don't think every book needs to have some sort of huge crisis to resolve and I like that there's no manufactured hullabaloo for Gogol to overcome; instead, he has a quiet epiphany and gets on with his life. But on the other hand, the book just kind of ... ends.

Bottom line
It is a wonderful, lyrical book that somehow wasn't for me.

Fine print
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Genre: fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book