The royal reader.

This is a wickedly funny little novella. It's a simple conceit: the Queen, out exercising the corgis, stumbles on a municipal bookmobile. In the name of good PR, she picks out a title, and obliging reads it. And the floodgates are opened. Soon HM is blowing through Trollope, putting the French president on the spot with her questions on obscure playwrights and drilling her subjects on their current reading during receiving lines. Needless to say, the Establishment is in an uproar. Even the corgis retaliate, chewing the library copy of the McEwan to a pulp. This passage, when the Queen is on her way to the opening of Parliament with a contraband novel, is particularly genius, and worth quoting at length:

Still, it is an ill-tempered royal couple that is driven down the Mall, the duke waving viciously from his side, the Queen listlessly from hers, and at some speed, too, as the procession tries to pick up the two minutes that have been lost.

When they got to Westminster she popped the offending book behind a cushion in the carriage, ready for the journey back, mindful as she sat on the throne and embarked on her speech of how tedious was the twaddle she was called on to deliver and that this was actually the only occasion when she got to read aloud to the nation. 'My government will do this...my government will do that.' It was so barbarously phrased and wholly devoid of style or interest that she felt it demeaned the very act of reading itself, with this year's performance even more garbled than usual as she, too, tried to pick up the missing couple of minutes.

It was with somer elief that she got back into the coach and reached behind the cusion for her book. It was not there. Steadfastly waving as they rumbled along she surreptitiously felt behind the other cushions.

'You're not sitting on it?'

'Sitting on what?'

'My book.'

'No, I am not. Some British Legion people here, and wheelchairs. Wave, for God's sake.'

When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He thought it had probably been exploded.

'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner.'

The young man, who seemed remarkably undeferential, said security may have thought it was a device.

The Queen said: 'Yes. That is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination.'

The footman said: 'Yes, ma'am.'

It was as if he were talking to his grandmother, and not for the first time the Queen was made unpleasantly aware of the hostility her reading seemed to arouse.

'Very well,' she said. 'Then you should inform security that I shall expect to find another copy of the same book, veted and explosive-free, waiting on my desk tomorrow morning. And another thing. The carriage cushions are filthy. Look at my gloves.' Her Majesty departed.

'Fuck,' said the footman, fishing out the book from where he had been told to hide it down the front of his breeches.

Brilliant. The reviews have quibbled that the story is slight, and that Bennett uses too snobby a tone. Well, there's not a whole lot to it, but the whole point of the snobby tone is to mimic that stiff upper lip the Establishment is so apt toward. Bottom line: a fun, quirky read, perfect for a lazy Sunday morning.

Pithy Verdict: We are very amused.

A walk braving bears and Katz.

If one were to undertake a 2,100 mile walk through much of the eastern United States, it's likely that a number of memorable incidents would occur in the course of the trek. If it happens to be Bill Bryson taking that walk, then it is fairly guaranteed that every bizarre possibility imaginable will occur, along with the likelihood of a few other unforeseeable calamities. Thankfully for readers, Bryson did attempt such a stroll, and lived to write about it in A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.

For anyone unfamiliar with Bryson's work, A Walk in the Woods is pretty representative of his humourous travelogue style. Irreverent in tone, Bryson has the uncanny knack of revealing the subcultures and history of a particular part of the world, all while displaying an astounding ability to attract the most bizarre characters and experiences during his travels. In tackling the Appalachian Trail, Bryson gets plenty of material to work with. Joined on the trail by his woefully out of shape but divinely humourous companion Stephen Katz, Bryson sets out on the trail in Georgia, hoping to avoid the fearsome black bear and inbred hillbillies. The bears never appear, but Bryson and Katz do manage to stumble across truly frightening examples of humanity, including the annoying Mary Ellen, the forever lost Chicken John, and Ralph Lauren-clad day trippers whom Bryson and Katz get the better of.

While tromping through the woods (or seeking out the least scary motel in he can enjoy some of humanity's comforts), Bryson tells of the trail's convoluted history and reflects on the changing environment of the trail as it falls under heavier use. Part travelogue, misadventure story, cultural study and environmental cri de coeur, Bryson's walk never fails to entertain, even if it won't help you avoid a black bear.

Travels with chilly.

With so many travel books out on the market, it sometimes hard to capture a reader's interest with yet another story of ramblings about one country or another. So what better way to draw attention to your foray into the genre than by undertaking what any sober person would consider an insane endeavor--an attempt to hitchhike around the whole of Ireland with a refridgerator?

Tony Hawks, to be fair, was not sober at the time he undertook a bet to do just that. Round Ireland With a Fridge is just that--Hawks' month-long journey around the island with a dorm-sized fridge, relying on only the generousity of picking him up off the side of the road in spite of his unusual baggage. Or so the original plan went. Hawks garnered some radio backing, with periodic on-air appeals to give him a lift when rides were slow in coming. I don't know if I would consider that real fulfillment of his bet--nor the use of anything other than a full-size Kelvinator as his traveling companion--but still, it's enough to give Hawks an unusual look at Ireland than if he had been a typical tourist. There's a lot of scenes that happen in pubs and the like (Hawks makes no secret of his desire to enjoy Irish hospitality--preferably with available Irish ladies), but Hawks and fridge also take some forays into some unexpected sidetrips.

Hawks' day job is that of a comedian for a British radio show, and his story is told in a humorous irreverent tone. Following his hilarious description of an especially memorable night in a rural hostel, it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to look at anyone planning a backpacking vacation without feeling pity for them. A twist on travelogues of the past, Hawks' Round Ireland has much of the offbeat feel of Bill Bryson, with the tone of a Dave Barry.

What rhymes with Bush?

In spite of my best efforts, I’m not the sort of person who would just willingly sit down with a volume of poetry. Nor am I one to spend precocious reading time with any political diatribes masquerading as rational thought. So why exactly did I pick up Calvin Trillin’s new volume A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme? Well, in part due to Trillin’s recent appearance on The Daily Show and previous familiarity with some of Trillin’s essays, but mostly in an attempt to feebly laugh at what has become a scary situation.

As poetry, Trillin is more Ogden Nash than Byron, but his limerick-style is suited to the nonsensical subject matter. Redundant sounds and forced rhythms make A Heckuva Job downright annoying to read straight through, but Trillin isn’t interested so much in proper placement of stresses as he is in driving home his political barbs. This he does with a wry tone, covering the misadventures of Iraq , the war on terror, and the sluggish Katrina response. A stanza from The War in Nine Stanzas is indicative:

Though nothing showed Iraq had played a part,
That’s where some hawks thought vengeance ought to start.
(Then terrorists could count on what we’d do:
Attack us, we’ll strike back, though not at you.)
We toppled first that band of Afghan loonies
Who’d let bin Laden hide out in their boonies.
The Taliban were smashed in one fell swoop.
Bin Laden, though, had plainly flown the coop.
Bush then forgot that name, and said, “In fact,
Iraq’s the place that has to be attacked.”
The war, Rove thought, with this one course correction,
Could still endure until the next election.
(August 15, 2004)

The types and subjects of the attacks are nothing new, and over the course of the volume, Trillin tends to repeat himself. As any good roast needs to be, though, each poem in A Heckuva Job contains enough truth to hit home. In the case of Dubya's policies, that might mean more of an occassion to cry, but at least Trillin's poesies add a little bit of comic relief.

Camara, check. Road map, check. Revolver and political vendetta, check, double check.

It's summertime, and with the impossibly oppressive proof of global warming and freedom from classroom tyranny comes that great American tradition: the road trip vacation. Sarah Vowell, contributing editor for NPR's This American Life, combines this innocent past time with another, less familiar American tradition: the tendency to off our duly-elected head of state. Hence Assassination Vacation, Vowell's journey into the obscure, sometimes scary and surprisingly bizarre history of presidential hitmen. Vowell is the perfect companion on this particular tour: a self-described Mount St. Helens of verbiage on the subject of assassinations, she roots out the more intriguing chesnuts surrounding the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Lincoln's demise is well-documented, but Vowell still finds some surprises. From her sleuthing, Americans may always wonder what the second Lincoln term would have accomplished, but for the word 'sockdologizing.' It's a pity in some ways that Garfield and McKinley aren't better known, as the circumstances surrounding their deaths are truly entertaining: Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, may just be the 19th-century equivilent of Michael Jackson in the painful-to-behold-but-still-compelled-to-watch sense. McKinley succumbed to a mere anarchist, yet his campaign to 'bestow' democracy on nations in which the U.S. had substantial financial interests (ahem), Vowell writes, seems entirely too familiar.

Vowell intersperes the historical bits with her actual experiences following in the occasionally poorly documented (or poorly plaqued) footsteps of president and assassin alike, creating a lively and deliciously sarcastic tone to what really is a discussion of a bunch of dead white guys. If there is any linguistic justice, 'Seward plaque' will immediately become part of the American lexicon. Always keen to hypocracies in history and in the current administration, Vowell provides sharp, biting commentary that will actually keep history students awake in class. Assassination Vacation reminds me of another history/travelogue that I supremely enjoyed, Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Pair the two together and you'll have great reading material for the drives between roadside historical markers and tourist traps.