Jim Harrison's "The English Major" is a funny and poignant road trip tale.
"The Secret History" by Donna Tartt.
Required reading if you're doing college tours with your kids...maybe.
While not a tourist book, one of my travel dream books is "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance also makes my list.
For the western part of your trip, I suggest reading one of Wallace Stegner's books. First choice is "Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs". In excellent prose, Stegner covers it all... the landscape, history, environmental fragility, the western identity.
Delighted to see William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways mentioned....I loved the journey ...following the route in my Rand Mc Nally Road Atlas..and the interesting folk he met.
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I'd like to add A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird to the list. A remarkable story!
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When I travel, I ask my a friend if any dectective novels are set in that place. I read Tony Hillerman traveling West and was much rewarded.
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Yes, Tony Hillerman especially for vivid descriptions of the Navajo Nation and accurate portrayal of the people there.
A must for an audiobook is Terry Tempest Williams reading her book on the National Park lands.
Nevada Barr wrote 15+ mysteries each set in a different National Park.
Wonderful answers to a question that stokes my own wanderlust. Added many of these to my list and am looking forward to working my way through them.
Definitely and foremostely, especially since you’ve enjoyed Steinbeck, his Travels with Charley, which documents his road trip in search of America with his poodle, Charley.
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I’d like to add Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” to this wonderful list. It is specially entertaining as an audiobook! The great master of American humor records his always enjoyable mixture of social satire and tall tales while traveling through the West in 1860 as a young man. I’d also like to recommend “Tough TripThrough Paradise” by Andrew Garcia. An autobiography published posthumously of his life as a mountain man in 1878 Montana.
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If you are planning to visit the Tenement Museum, I recommend you first read "Call It Sleep" by Henry Roth.
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East of Eden and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn are two of my favorites, as well! For a trip west, you might like Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner.
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Wisconsin: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16059.The_Dive_From_Clausen_s_Pier
No trip to Arches is complete without reading "Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey. "English Creek" by Ivan Doig will give you a good feel for traditional Montana. The recently released "Cloudbursts" by Thomas McGuane will give you some views of what life is like in contemporary Montana. The underated "Dalva" by Jim Harrison is a superb novel about the traditional West.
Another suggestion if I may: you will be traveling close to Capitol Reef National Park. It is a special place.
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"Desert Solitaire" is all the more essential to read when one experiences the traffic, crowds and congestion of Arches these days.
Blue Highways by Willian Least-Heat Moon. Doesn't touch one interstate highway. Great interviews. Original thinking. Concise writing.
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Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey - so descriptive, you'll be wringing water out of the book. A terrific introduction to the Pacific NW.
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Funny you should mention “Sometimes A Great Notion”.... Just the other day I purchased from iTunes Charley Pride’s song, “The Family of Man”, that was on the soundtrack of the movie.. It was a good movie, too...
I enjoyed "Letters From Yellowstone" by Diane Smith. The book takes place in 1898 when a young woman who loves botany, gets invited to join a field study in the park. Since she used her initials when applying for the job, the study leader assumes she is a man and is very unhappy when he finds out otherwise. Despite their reticence of traveling with a woman, the scientists move through the summer from one locale in the park to the next. A wonderful read about a woman ahead of her time who is not afraid to attempt what most women of that time would never think possible.
I see someone has already mentioned "Blue Highways". I tell anyone that asks about a good travel story book to get this one. It doesn't disappoint. Happy trails!
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Years ago, one summer I took a 9,000 mile drive around the U.S. I took Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman along for the ride..
Great traveling companions.....!
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Don't forget Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie in Search of America.
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Chris Offutt is a fine pick for books about Kentucky. Both "Kentucky Straight" and "Out of the Woods" offer a great introduction to his work but those who have already these might want to check out his new novel "Country Dark."
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Anything about the west by Rebecca Solnit but Storming the Gates of Paradise will get you started.
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Related to the Dakotas: Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club. Not about travel per se (unless you count emigration). but a wonderfully evocative read.
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A must-read masterpiece of travel writing is Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon. Published in 1982, this memoir chronicles the author's experiences meeting people in small town and rural America as he travels the back roads all across the American continent. He has just lost his job as an English teacher and his wife has left him, so with nothing to root him and a need to find himself, he begins an adventure that highlights both the cultural differences and the touching humanity of the people he meets on his outward and inward journey. Years ago I facilitated discussions of this book in public libraries across Connecticut. Usually, audiences for book discussions are primarily women, but for this book many men turned out, eager to discuss how they related to Moon's journey.
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"This Boy's Life" by Tobias Wolff is a riveting account of his experiences in the Northwest and California.
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The Big Burn by Timothy Egan about major forest fires in the west that resulted in the creation of the national park system. It's great on audio!!
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