Undiscovered County

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America - Bill Bryson (Perennial, 1989)

This was my other travel book, although I didn't get to it until the plane ride home. But it was nice to "return" to America with Bryson and his journey from the center of the country out to the edges and back again.

This isn't my favorite of the books I've read - the humor seems a little meaner somehow - but it was fascinating to live vicariously as he drove down little roads and got lost. His search for the perfect small town was marred by bland, homogenous motels and diners as well as by crassly commercial tourist traps. And yet he regularly came across beautiful and interesting sites.

Coming from California, I have to remind myself (if I bother) that there's a whole rest of the country that sees my state as pretty much a foreign land. And this was likely even more the case a quarter century ago. So I'm glad for Bryson's reminder that there's a pretty fascinating (and boring, or fascinatingly boring) land out there between the coasts.

When the weather gets hot...

True Confessions - Rachel Gibson (Avon 2001)

...I start craving books about the rural Mountain West. Or the South. I'm kind of easy to please that way. What I do not crave is a 2500 year old text about the Peloponnesian War. So I'm still plugging along on that.

This was my break from that about 2-3 weeks ago. Hope takes refuge in an idyllic Idaho town to get her groove back in her tabloid stories. But it turns out the sexy sheriff also has ties to Los Angeles. And when they meet, sparks fly. In all sorts of directions.

Can I write the back covers for romance novels? Please? I'll keep practicing and getting better at it.

No fake marriages, but plenty of love under false pretenses.