Road Trip Reads

It’s the time of the year when my social media feeds are flooded with pictures of friends on tropical vacations. While I’m jealous that they’re on the beach while I watch snow melt, I prefer a different kind of travel. Road trips are much more appealing to me – I sometimes have even more fun getting to know the little towns and landscape along the way than I do at the final destination.

Right now I don’t have much planned other than weekend day trips, so I’ll do the next best thing: read about them! Reading about the experiences other people have on road trip adventures always makes me so much more inspired for my next trip.

Cross Country: 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 by Robert Sullivan is a book that truly reads like a real-life road trip. Sullivan doesn't dress anything up to be bigger or better than it was. He writes about the family arguments, the less-than-desirable hotels, the even less desirable rest stops, etc. He manages to weave historical stories within the personal account of his travels, something that makes this book that much more appealing to me. A big part of why I love road trips is learning about the history of each place and to imagine what happened before I arrived.

The mixture of history lessons plus travel and personal memoir makes this book a compelling read for anyone with an itch to travel.

"From the bestselling author of "Rats," a personal and national history of one of America's favorite pastimes: driving across the country.

The cross-country trip is the trip that often whizzes past us on our way to quaint back roads and scenic parks; it's an America of long, looping highways, strip malls, fast-food depots, and road rage, but also one that is wide-open, awe-inspiring, and heartwarmingly lonely. Here, Sullivan, who has driven cross-country more than two dozen times, recounts his family's annual summer migration from Oregon to New York. His story of moving his family back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast (and various other migrations), is replete with all the minor disasters, humor, and wonderful coincidences that characterize life on the road, not to mention life.” publisher 

Interested in similar titles? Try these:
Ghost Rider: travels on the healing road by Neil Peart

The Kindness Diaries: one man's quest to ignite goodwill and transform lives around the world by Leon Logothetis

Life is a Wheel: love, death, etc., and a bike ride across America by Bruce Weber

The Lost Continent: travels in small town America by Bill Bryson 

Staff Pick: Primates of Park Avenue

Have you ever wondered how the 1% of the 1% really live? Then you may enjoy Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin. It provides a very interesting look inside the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the crème de la crème of the wealthy population make their homes. Wednesday Martin lived with her husband in downtown New York City, but decided they had to move to the Upper East Side for the sake of their offspring. Already living in Manhattan, they wanted to be closer to family and have access to the best public schools and children's resources - and of course, proximity to Central Park.

Martin peppers the book with 'Fieldnotes' between the chapters, looking at Manhattan and its residents through an anthropological lens, and viewing them as strange primates for the benefit of those completely unfamiliar with their culture. These notes are quite amusing and sometimes insightful, even for readers who may never encounter such beings in the wild. She documents her family's search for housing, schools, and playdates, and the unspoken social rules that govern seemingly every interaction. Her experiences with other UES mothers make for a fascinating read, even as I was horrified by the women's atrocious behaviour. Martin tries to redeem the women in the last part of the book after a personal tragedy, showing that they are in fact human. Nonetheless, I'd rather read about this strange population than live among them.

I Totally Meant to Do That by Jane Borden is another book documenting a Southern debutante's attempt to fit into the jungle that is New York City. Alternatively, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua and Bringing Up Bébé: one American Mother discovers the wisdom of French parenting by Pamela Druckerman give very different views on parenting practices from different cultures.

 

The Power of the Adolescent Girl

October 11 was the United Nations International Day of the Girl and this year’s theme is “The Power of the Adolescent Girl: Vision for 2030”. In choosing this theme, the United Nations has stated that “An investment in realising the power of adolescent girls upholds their rights today and promises a more equitable and prosperous future, one in which half of humanity is an equal partner in solving the problems of climate change, political conflict, economic growth, disease prevention, and global sustainability.” 

There are so many inspiring books of teenage girls overcoming great struggles or making a difference in their communities in our library collection. Here are just a few of them:

Girls living in war zones often pay a terrifying price for their survival, but their stories of perseverance are inspiring. I am Malala: the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai is one of the most inspiring stories of the last few years. “When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school. Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York.” At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.” Publisher. 

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara describes the author’s torture as a 12 year old girl in Sierra Leone when rebel soldiers cut off both of her hands, and her subsequent struggles begging on the streets of Newtown. A mango was the first thing she ate after her attack: "the sweet taste reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her." Publisher.  Today, Mariatu Kamara lives in Toronto and gives presentations on the impact of war on children as a UNICEF Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict.

Little Daughter: a memoir of survival in Burma and the West tells the story of Zoya Phan, a member of the Karen Tribe who had to flee her home at age 13 when the Burmese army attacked her people. Zoya survived years in refugee camps to eventually become a prominent activist in the U.K., where she is currently the International Coordinator of the human rights organization Burma Campaign UK.  Phan remains critical of the Burmese army, and wrote Little Daughter to increase awareness of the ongoing human rights abuses in Burma. 

We know many of the names of courageous women who fought for civil rights in North America like Viola Desmond, Rosa Parks, Septima Clark and more, but teenage girls also played important role in the struggle for equality. Warriors don't cry : the searing memoir of the battle to integrate Little Rock's Central High tells the story of Melba Pattillo, a sixteen year old student who was one of nine teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. “Throughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their parents, threatened by a lynch mob's rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down.” Publisher.

 

Teenagers might be interested in several YA books that tells the story of teenagers in the American Civil Rights era:   Freedom's children : young civil rights activists tell their own stories by Ellen Levine, Turning15 on the road to freedom : my story of the Selma Voting Rights March  by Lynda Blackmon Lowery, and Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose.

For a list of more age-appropriate materials to inspire girls to change the world, please visit A Mighty Girl.

Like the show? Read the original true story!

Last week  I wrote wrote about a few read-alikes for popular television shows, but didn’t mention any series that were originally based on true stories. Memoirs, biographies, and historical non-fiction books that provide inspiration for television shows often contain interesting insights that aren’t emphasized on screen, and offer a less sensationalized look into complex and nuanced worlds. 

Netflix’s popular series, Orange is the New Black, is loosely based on an autobiography by Piper Kerman titled Orange is the New Black: My year in a Women’s Prison. There are some biographical details that Piper Kerman, the author shares with Piper Chapman, the character - but the book is a much more introspective look at the sense of community between incarcerated women, and reveals many of the tragic consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing in the United States. 

The creators of HBO’s BoardwalkEmpire also found their inspiration in a non-fiction book of the same name. Nelson Johnson’s book, Boardwalk Empire was a painstakingly researched account of the businessmen and thugs who built Atlantic City into a gambling mecca in the 1930s. The creators of the show have gone on record to say that they fictionalized many of the real-life characters written about in the book so that fans of the show wouldn’t accidentally find historical information that would “spoil” what happened to their favourite characters.

Showtime’s Masters of Sex is based on Thomas Maier’s book, Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love. Maier used interviews with both Masters and Johnson to learn more about the unusual research methods used by the pair to understand sexual behaviour in humans for the very first time. “Highlighting interviews with the notoriously private Masters and the ambitious Johnson, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier shows how this unusual team changed the way we all thought about, talked about, and engaged in sex while they simultaneously tried to make sense of their own relationship. Entertaining, revealing, and beautifully told, Masters of Sex sheds light on the eternal mysteries of desire, intimacy, and the American psyche.” Publisher.

BBC’s Call the Midwife is the somewhat unlikely hit show inspired by Jennifer Worth's trilogy of memoirs of the same name, based on her experience of being a midwife in 1950s London.  “Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. Funny, disturbing and incredibly moving, Jennifer's stories bring to life the colourful world of the East End in the 1950s.” Publisher.