Planning a road trip? Here are 5 titles you won't want to leave home without: Blundo
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On a car trip to Texas this month, my wife and I started making a list of the best audiobooks we’ve listened to on long drives.
We were nearing the end of “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr, which now sits at the top of my list of best driving books ever.
The 2021 novel is a sweeping epic spanning centuries, with memorable characters on perilous journeys. Just the thing to make Dallas traffic seem bearable by comparison.
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“Cloud Cuckoo Land,” a tribute to the power of books, somehow manages to be both intricate and easy to follow, an essential quality for a long-haul listen, at least in my mind.
In second place, I’m putting “In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette,” a 2014 nonfiction work by Hampton Sides. It’s one of those survival stories that you can’t believe anyone survived. The account of suffering and bravery by the Jeannette crew has stayed with me, although the details of the vacation we were on while listening to it have not.
In third place: “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West,” an excruciating nonfiction work by Dee Brown, published in 1970. In this case, I do remember the vacation. We were headed West for Yellowstone National Park, passing through the same areas where American Indians suffered so much.
Fourth place goes to “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides, a 2011 novel about the tortured relationship between three recent college graduates. Sounds bleak, I know, but as a long-ago college graduate it was comforting to revisit angst I would never have to experience again.
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I’ll award fifth to “Raptor Red,” perhaps for nostalgic reasons. The 1995 novel by Robert Bakker reminds me of when our kids were young and how Raptor made peace settle over the car with its absorbing story told from the point of view of a velociraptor.
Also solid car listens:
⋅ Her Fearful Symmetry,” a spooky 2009 novel by Audrey Niffenegger.
⋅ The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,” a 2011 nonfiction book about ancients ahead of their time by Stephen Greenblatt.
⋅ “Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History,” a harrowing 2000 account of the Galveston storm of 1900 by Erik Larson.
⋅ And finally the captivating insect essays in “Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs,” written by Sue Hubbell and published in 1994.
It actually made me feel a little guilty about the squashed creatures that collected on my windshield while I listened to it.
Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.
@joeblundo
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Here are 5 audiobooks that Joe Blundo recommonds for road trips
