Book Review – Blue Highways

…or, as I am calling it to myself, “The Epic Book of Epic-ness.” 

Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon, is the selection for the Travel Book Club that I Co-coordinate.  This sucker is over 400 pages long, and this was my second reading of it. 

First, to explain the title, on a road atlas, the main highways (I-40, I-15, etc.) are in red.  The blue highways are those two-lane state roads that go through all the small towns, where you cringe if you get stuck behind a Sunday driver because you can’t pass them because the road is also twisty and hilly and there are lots of double yellow lines in the middle. 

aka The Epic Book of Epic-ness

Heat-Moon wrote this book in the late 70s, after splitting from his wife, wryly called “The Cherokee,” and losing his job.  He decides to take a year to explore the United States, using only the blue highways.  It is a classic tale of the author using the journey to discover, not only his country, but more about himself. 

I’m not sure how old I was when I read this the first time.  All I remember is that I had a conception that the author was “older” than I was at the time, and that his age was in my distant future.  (I can’t have been that young…I was living in Nevada for sure, and I’m guessing I was in my late 20s.)  So, it came as a shock to learn on my second reading that the age of the author at the time was…38.  Gulp.  That’s a year younger than I am right now.  My second thought, after that shock and realizing how I’ve aged since the first reading (really!  not that much!) was that, hey, I would love to go on a year-long road trip!  But that’s another story. 

I would recommend this book.  Heat-Moon is a gifted writer in the style of Mark Twain.  His powers of describing people cannot be surpassed.  I will paraphrase…”He had the kind of face that had a lot of miles on it.”  “She was the kind of octogenarian that made you not want to miss it.”  Really!  Can’t you just picture those people, in one short sentence?  And Heat-Moon did all kinds of research about the places he visited.  He made a point of going to out-of-the-way places, and places with strange names, just because they had strange names.   Or were ironically named Nameless.  If you have any love of road trips, eating in diners, obeying no clock but your own, this is a wonderful story.

But be prepared.  Do you remember I mentioned this book is 400+ pages?  And that the print is small?  I apologize, Mr. Heat-Moon, but as charming as I found this book, I also found it a wonderful cure for insomnia, of which I am a frequent victim.  Read it during the day, sitting up!  And be prepared to spend some time!  This is a book to be savored, not gulped. 

What I most wanted to do is to have a gigantic United States map to hang on a wall, so I could highlight the places he visited.  It was also a thrill when he passed through North Carolina and I recognized place names from the coast, and when he passed through Northern Nevada, and I recognized places I’d visited.  Nothing gives buy-in like writing about a place the reader has lived, and since he visited so very many places, this book can have a ring of familiarity with almost everyone. 

The English major in me wants to write a paper comparing this book with the book the TBC read last year, Red Dust, by Ma Jian, that I was calling “I Hate China” in my head.   Too much analysis for a simple blog post, but suffice it to say that the both feature men who travel their own country when their personal lives tank, but they are very, very different books in tone and manner. 

And now, pardon me…I’m going looking for a big road map…

Monstrous Women

Late last year, I read my first ever book featuring Sherlock Holmes, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King.  I read it for the Henderson Library Book Club, and the vast majority of us found the book delightful.  You see, the beekeeper in the story is none other than Sherlock Holmes, and the tale introduces a 15-year-old Mary Russell, a brilliant, gangly, orphaned teen who literally stumbles upon Holmes in his retirement in the countryside.  Russell and Holmes develop a mentor/mentee relationship, and the story ends (inevitably), with Russell and Holmes solving a crime that indirectly involves Holmes nemesis, Moriarty.  The book is hilarious in a very dry, British way (which, with my current fascination with the Royals, I find wonderful).  One of our book club members, a male, who had read many Sherlock Holmes tales, found it singularly unfullfilling, but I believe the women in our club loved the idea of a brilliant Holmesian detective.  (There was even comparison to Nancy Drew…and that always makes for good conversation!)

So, I gleefully picked up the second in the series, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, which picks up the story as Mary is just about to become of age to fully control her inheritance at the age of 21.  Mary is beginning to have some unsettling feelings for Holmes, who is nearly 60.  Mary and Holmes are intellectual soulmates, so any age difference has been a non-issue up to this point.  Mary becomes involved in The Temple, lead by a charismatic, feminist, leader who is a mystic in the true sense of the word.  The organization appeals to rich, young women who donate their money…and begin to die “accidentally.” And so Mary must solve the crime. 

I will try not to leave too many spoilers, but Mary is eventually kidnapped and tortured in a truly bizarre way.  She remarks that after she is rescued (sorry for the spoiler, but you knew it was coming…there is more to the series, after all) she has truly left her childhood behind. 

Overall, I found the plot and the characters less compelling that in the Beekeeper’s Apprentice.  However, I am strongly drawn to prequels where we learn how a superhero ahd their origins and development.  (I watched Smallville for a long time…)  Perhaps that has a lot to do with the attractir.on of Book 1 versus Book 2.  I wasn’t drawn to the mysticism element in the book either, though the leader of The Temple was eventually presented as an attractive character.

However…I still want to read Book 3, just to follow the story.  This may be the year of the Mary Russell series for me.  We’ll see how far it goes.  And however, hard I try, I can’t put Robert Downey, Jr., into my head as Sherlock in these books, but reading the books has, as I mentioned earlier in my Sherlock Holmes :  A Game of Shadows review, helped me appreciate the allusions in the movie a good deal more.  (But than, that’s generally my opinion of book vs. movie version.  Sideways is the glaring exception to this.) 

And, in typical go-to-the-source fashion, I’ve checked out A Study in Scarlet by Doyle himself , just to see how it all began…look for a review in the coming weeks, to see my reaction to Doyle!  (Perhaps…I’ve got a large stack of books on the floor on my side of the bed…so many books, so little time…)