A few years back I began a new tradition: When traveling to a US city or foreign country I haven’t been to, I take along a book set in that place. I’ll start the book before I leave home, read a ton on the plane, then wrap the book up while on trains or buses throughout the vacation. The English major in me loves to make literary connections — for example, reading Murakami’s After Dark while in Tokyo gave me an interesting mental narration as I walked past izakaya’s bursting with diners in the wee hours of the night. Other books I’ve read abroad:
Sightseeing while in Thailand.
Let the Great World Spin while in New York.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and After Dark while in Japan.
And so on.
So why not read a good book about home every so often? I started doing this as well, and I get the same sense of satisfaction — without the $$$ for a plane ticket, though.
There’s a ton of good literature set in and around Los Angeles: Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Brando Skyhorse’s The Madonnas of Echo Park, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, unforgettable sections of Kerouac’s On the Road. I mean, who can read this On the Road quote just once?
I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.
By The List 