The Stories that Define a Place

I started reading the two most quintessentially American travel narratives on my list in Canada. I don’t quite know how this happened. Travels with Charley was just sitting on the book shelf of the woman I was staying with in Toronto, waiting for me when I finished all the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings. Roughing It, by Mark Twain, was recommended to me in Phoenix, bought in San Diego, and sat in my duffel bag through LA, and Oakland, and Portland, waiting patiently to be the book I read next.