Road trip! Can I go coast-to-coast on Newsworthy Novels recommendations?
We can start way up in Alaska, dog-sledding across the vast, snowy frontier (The Iditarod & Henry's Murder on the Iditarod Trail)...
...Then we'll head across Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north that has somehow turned into the world neighborhood's crack-den of dirty politics. Hi, Rob Ford! Anyway, moving on ... (Canadian Politics & Fallis' The Best Laid Plans)...
...moving on South, we'll check in with the Border Patrol (and dodge the drug-smugglers) as we cross over into Washington State (The Border Patrol, the US-Canadian Border, & Lynch's Border Songs) ...
...make our way through lush, green Oregon and Northern California (Marijuana in the US & Boyle’s Budding Prospects )...
...until we reach Southern California, with TC Boyle's classic about Mexican immigrants (U.S. Immigration Reform & Boyle's Tortilla Curtain )...
...then we can "drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas" for a little Hunter S. Thompson action (Las Vegas' Fall/Rise & Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas )...
For Texas, I haven't read The Son by Philipp Meyer, but I hear it's excellent and it sounds like the Great Texas Novel may have finally arrived...
Moving on, we'll head north through the Great Plains and the Native American Reservations... ( North Dakota's Tribes & Erdrich's The Round House)
...through Iowa with its presidential caucuses... Sex Scandal Rebounds & Klein's Primary Colors
...maybe stopping by at a baseball game at one of Wisconsin's universities... College Baseball & Harbach's The Art of Fielding
...until we make our way to Chicago and the meat-packing plants... British Horsemeat Scandal & Sinclair's The Jungle
...and we can stop by Detroit... Detroit & Eugenides' Middlesex
...before we head east, through West Virginia with its coal mines... West Virginia Coal Mining, Mountaintop Removal, & Pancake's Strange as This Weather Has Been ...
..and maybe we'll drop into DC for some politicking... April 27th White House Correspondents' Dinner & Tanabe's The List
Then it's off to New York to hit Wall Street... Bond Traders & Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities ...
...and up to the Athens of America to see how things are going for med school grads... Medical School & Shem's House of God...
...and finally, we'll end our trip up in the Northeast with those Ivy League kids and their crazy neo-Grecian/satanic rituals! University Scandals & Tartt's The Secret History
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