How to use this Page

Just when I needed a bit of cheering up about the ol' "decline of reading" hobbyhorse, my friend Mark sent me this great bit of opinion from John McWhorter's column in the New York Sun:

America in 1907 read more than most of us. But did America of 1907 read smarter than us? Transported back to America in 1907, would we savor a book culture less dumbed down than ours? Well, let's take a look at the bestselling fiction of 1907. All 10 were potboilers unknown today. The top seller was "The Lady of the Decoration" by one Frances Little. Others on the list included the likes of "The Port of Missing Men" and "Half a Rogue."

After much dithering, I of course ended up taking along half a dozen books on the honeymoon -- far more than I could possibly have time to read in a week; but the ALP did the same, as this is apparently the packing curse of the book nerd. Here are the ones I did get to.

Frommer's Puerto Rico, 8th Edition
(July 2006)
Yeah, I know, not your typical narrative to review. But this is the one that's got the most signs of wear, and I probably read the whole thing cover to cover in various increments. Mostly we were interested in good restaurants (mmm, mofongos and mallorcas) and bars (mojitos of course), and a few historical sights (the 500-year old fort of El Morro, evocative of horrific barracks life as well as the occasional excitement of a pirate raid; and the well-preserved home of Dona Felisa, the beloved long-time major of San Juan, the first woman to be elected mayor of any Western city; and our own hotel, El Convento, which has its share of history from convent to flophouse to glamorous 1960s hotel life).

My only complaint about Frommer's is that they failed entirely to mention the La Perla district, which shows up as a blank patch on the map of San Juan. The ALP and I curiously wandered outside the old city walls and into the district, which turned out to be not only the birthplace of reggaeton but the most notorious ghetto on the island. We managed to walk out on the other side none the worse for wear, but not without some serious culture shock. Now the ALP wants to write a noir mystery set in San Juan; you could do a lot worse.

The Dud Avocado
by Elaine Dundy
(New York Review of Books edition, June 2007)
So many people recommended this as vacation reading that it seemed inevitable, and I was so glad they convinced me. From the blurb quote by Groucho Marx to the impassioned introduction by Terry Teachout, they were right all the way. It's the perfect intellectual/bohemian/romantic romp, and brought back intense memories of my own youth in study abroad programs in Europe (while making me glad I wasn't back there again). The heroine, Sally Jay Gorce (whose name I love) is an inveterate runner-away-from-home and has had the immense luck of being given an allowance to live in Paris for two years, and she is, as the back jacket puts it "hell-bent on living." An affair with a married Italian, involvement with an invigorating circle of pretentious bohemians, friendships and love affairs with artists, cottage stays in Biarritz, involvement with movie directors and bullfighters and pimps -- Gorce's whirlwind tour is a brilliant encapsulation of the invigorating novelty as well as the occasional tedium and sham that come with being young and unfettered in a foreign country. The comedy comes from both her own awkward stumbles and the pitch-perfect portraits of boorish and self-absorbed aristocrats, artists, and small-town Americans. The pathos comes from her unavoidable moral instinct, which realizes that there are casualties in such a headlong flight.

I tried to describe the plot (involving misplaced affections, revenges, and secret crimes, as well as lots of heated conversations in French cafes) to the ALP, who pronounced that it sounded like chick lit. And it's true to some degree -- I won't really be spoiling it to tell you that Sally Jay finds true love at the end of her wanderings. But it all feels less premeditated and more spontaneous than that moniker would imply -- it has the momentum that real travel experiences do, where one thing leads surprisingly to another and you stay out all night and somehow it all seems symbolic and connected. Sally Jay connected with the bohemian traveler in me, and she m