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It’s almost Great American Bookstore Tour time, and I need your help

A photo from my last epic road trip -- a Spring Break 2007 trek to New Orleans. This is about three minutes after I won a bet about how long I could stay on a mechanical bull. As they say, don't threaten me with a good time. — From my last epic road trip — a 2007 trek to New Orleans. This is shortly after I won a bet — with a skeevy stranger — about how long I could stay on a mechanical bull. Don’t threaten me with a good time.

About ten months ago, I began planning a vacation-slash-road-trip that would take me to the western coast of ye olde United States and, more importantly, to six of the greatest independent bookstores our country has to offer. Now, as spring peeks its timid head up over miniature piles of lingering snow-sludge, my literary adventure is a mere nine days away.

That’s right people, it’s Great American Bookstore Tour time—two weeks, five cities, five bookstores (plus The Strand), one SUV and one CD collection with an average release year of 1999. Here’s the agenda:

SEATTLE:
My journey begins with two days here, where I’ll have one travel companion, plus the pleasure of interviewing Elliot Bay Book Co. owner Peter Aaron. (Fun fact: My employer, Reuters, is allowing me to document some of my “How does one keep a bookstore open these days?” findings in a TBD article. Of course, all judgmental city-based commentary and glowing reviews of roadside cheese food products will continue to be documented on ST.)

PORTLAND:
I anticipate spending my three days in Portland ogling hipsters and eating macrobiotic food, with the exception of the delightful afternoon I’ll get with Miriam Sontz, COO of Powell’s Books. There is a strong possibility I will fall so madly in love with this store that I will inelegantly beg Sontz for permission to stay forever, volunteering to clean bathrooms or stock shelves or stand on the sidewalk and maniacally lure in new customers by screaming things like “Books reading learn good!”

SAN FRANCISCO:
In Portland, I’ll take on two travel companions (these are, by the way, actual friends ….lest you think I have plans to pick up a predetermined number of hitchhikers along the way). Together, and with the help of the aforementioned CD collection, we’ll meander down to San Francisco, where I’ll spend four days, one of which will include a chat with City Lights Books chief buyer Paul Yamazaki.

DENVER:
Shedding my fellow road trippers, I will begin the long and arduous 20-hour drive from San Francisco to Denver, with overnights along the way in Elko, Nevada (a geographically logical stopping place, though I was also swayed by the abundance of casinos) and Salt Lake City (Mormons, natch). After three days of solo travel — if I don’t tweet at least every two hours, please call someone — I’ll spend another two in Denver, where I’ll have the pleasure of speaking with Tattered Cover Book Store CEO Joyce Meskis.

WASHINGTON DC:
Trading in my trusty steed for a bird of steel again, I’ll fly from Denver to DC, where I hope to chat with Politics & Prose owners Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine, and spend a moderately more calm weekend with friends. Finally, I’ll close out the trip with an exhausted Amtrak ride back up to NYC, armed with trinkets and books and whatever memories haven’t been washed away by nightly carousing and cocktails.

SO HERE IS WHERE YOU COME IN. While I could walk around DC with my eyes closed (not that I wouldn’t get run over by a town car with diplomatic plates; just saying I could technically do it) I have yet to even step foot in the USA west of ….Louisiana? So I need recommendations. If one had but a few brief days in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Denver, where should one dine and drink? What should one do? Are there other bookstores one should check out? Secret divey hole-in-the-wall pubs off the beaten path? Bizarre funky art installations? Inquiring minds want to know. Inquiring minds need to know. Because left to my own devices I’ll be overwhelmed by possibility and end up ordering room service.

Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave is possibly the saddest book I’ve read in my entire life

Close your eyes. Okay now open them because obvi you need them to read this. Now think about the saddest thing you can think of—puppies dying, children crying, your local bodega running out of Ranch Doritos, what have you. Now multiply that thing times a million. A billion, even. Wrap it in a layer of terminal illness, crimes against humanity and the possible absence of a benevolent God. Only now—having duly considered the sheer tragedy and injustice of the universe—are you even remotely approaching the inherent and heart-wrenching sadness of Wave.

On vacation with her family in Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala is merely perturbed when on the morning of December 26, 2004, waves can be seeing crashing over the usually calm beachhead outside their hotel. Within minutes she realizes what’s happening—the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami we would later learn killed more than 200,000 was about to hit, and she had minutes, maybe seconds, to get out.

Grabbing her children and her husband, Deraniyagala runs outside, failing to stop and warn her parents—staying in the room next door—of the impending catastrophe. It ultimately doesn’t matter. In the ensuing tidal wave, which floods the Jeep in which Deraniyagala and her family are attempting escape, Deraniyagala’s children and husband die. Her parents’ death—a given, as they never escaped the ultimately-leveled hotel—is just icing on the world’s shittiest cake.

For her part, Deraniyagala is tossed around in the Jeep and ultimately comes to—albeit, still in shock. She is rescued moments before being washed out to sea. Deraniyagala spends a hollow-eyed few days trolling the local hospital, waiting for her family to join the scores of survivors camped out there, but also somehow knowing they won’t. Several weeks after the wave, their bodies are identified, and so begins Deraniyagala’s decade-long grieving process, outlined in Wave, a slim but impactful memoir.

Sheryl Sandberg wants women to grow a pair

The woman of Sheryl Sandberg’s world is a timid creature. She’s smart but not savvy, ambitious but afraid to appear so, confident and driven but plagued by self-doubt. She’s wary of participating in meetings, wary of asking for promotions, wary of taking on new assignments. And don’t even get me started on motherhood—this woman has been ruminating on the work/life balance basically since she learned where babies come from.

For this woman, Sandberg has a wealth of advice, which in its entirety boils down to the central conceit of her book: Lean In. This woman—this hyper-sensitive, underutilized and challenge-averse woman—needs to stop sitting in the back row at meetings, stop taking flak from colleagues, and stop turning down opportunities because she’s unsure about her abilities. She needs to build organic and mutually beneficial relationships with coworkers, and worry less about being liked and more about being respected. She needs to speak her mind with colleagues and bosses, and if and when she decides to throw a bun in the oven, not start sacrificing her career the second she realizes she’s pregnant. She could also stand to snag an understanding, supportive and equally driven husband, who won’t hesitate to pitch in on 50% of the child-rearing and housework. In short, Sheryl Sandberg wants this woman to sack up (which, incidentally, would have been a way better book title.)

The Passage did an Indiana Jones under the closing door that is my tolerance for vampire books

Clocking in at over 900 pages, The Passage tested my ability to finish a book in fewer than seven days (I lost). Fortunately for author Justin Cronin, I have an unlimited capacity for consuming page-turners late into the night, preferably while munching on Chex Mix. I see your gargantuan paperback, Mr. Cronin, and raise you a fistful of cheese-flavored pretzels bits. It took nine days, but I did it.

Where to begin. So The Passage centers on a government experiment being conducted on twelve willing participants (willing by virtue of the alternative: all are death row inmates) who the U.S. military hopes to turn into fast-healing, super-strong and generally un-killable soldiers. Of course, those of us familiar with a little thing called pop culture know how this ends: fucking vampires.

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth

It’s only through sheer fortuitous timing that the week I read a book on feminism, Seth MacFarlane goes on national television to offend a zillion people with uninspired jokes about actresses’ boobs. And since I’ve been presented with such a timely opportunity to discuss gender as it’s portrayed in modern society, let’s conduct a bit of a thought exercise—looking at Seth MacFarlane’s Oscar performance through the lens of Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman.

Throughout her book’s 300-odd pages, Moran eschews characterizations of feminism that rely on lofty terminology or soul-searching investigations of social mores. Her own definition on the subject essentially boils down to two key tenets: 1) An environment of equality is one in which, quite simply, “everyone is being polite to each other” and 2) When one is unsure whether or not they’ve been presented with a bit of sexism—or, as Moran sometimes puts it, a bit of “total fucking bullshit”—one must simply ask oneself: “Are the men doing it?”