November RandomCAT - Traffic Jam

Traffic jams – the inevitable when we go on holiday or work in a larger city. Hundreds of cars, being stuck, giving us time to think about something else. We can think of taking the train or the bike tomorrow. We dream of the next holiday on a cruise ship. We might use the time and plan the upcoming business trip by airplane to another country. Sometimes we simply look forward to the walk with our dog in the evening. Or maybe we think of the next book that we want to read? Lots of options!

For this month's RandomCAT you need to read a book that either is about a topic traffic/mobility related, or a book that has traffic/mobility related words in the title.

There are loads and loads of books out there that fit this theme, but here are some examples:
Zoo Station by David Downing
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Green Road by Anne Enright
The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzane Joinson
Exit West by Mohain Hamid
Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult
The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors

Have a great reading month (and not so many traffic jams)! :)

Don't forget to update the Wiki!

My first thought is that this would be the perfect time to read Traffic. I’ve had the book for over 4 years now and would like to finally read it.

>2 LittleTaiko: A perfect fit, I'd say!

Would the word mapping fit as mobility related?

Interesting! I'll have to see what I have on my tbr shelf.

I have several on my TBR that I think might work. Two that will be fairly quick reads and consequently good for November are Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear and Driving Force by Dick Francis.

I will pick something short for this month's theme: The Mystery of the Flying Express, by Franklin W. Dixon.

Excellent idea -- I had lots of possibilities!

I was a bit panicky until I saw your list, but now I get it. I’ll have to look and see what I might have. I can’t believe it’s time for our next Random.

Great theme! A quick check of my books has turned up a number that will fit. I am currently leaning towards choosing one of these - I'm Travelling Alone by Samuel Bjork, This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash or A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson.

This is a great theme, and I had fun glancing through titles to figure out what I want to read--or least, what I'll read first! I came up with The Zoo on the Road to Nablus: A Story of Survival from the West Bank. If it's any good, I'll end up passing it on to my mom at Thanksgiving, too--she'll probably love it just for the gorgeous picture of the giraffe on the front :)

I've got a few on my tbr...

Correction Road / Glen Dresser
Country Roads: Memoirs from Rural Canada / Pam Chamberlain
The Hero's Walk / Anita Rau Badami (not sure if I'll read this in Nov or the start of Dec, for Dec's book club)
Love Walked In / Maria de los Santos

Oh boy. I do have a couple of books I could read for this, but it also gives me the perfect excuse to get a book I've been meaning to buy for ages, Mark Thomas' Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier, For Fun, but had been holding back as I really do need to get some kind of a grip on Mt TBR. It's all your fault ...!

(thank you! :D )

I’ve checked my pile and came up with a few possibilities:

Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
Roadwalkers by Shirley Ann Grau
In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld
East of the Mountains by David Guterson
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (for some reason, I can’t get the touchstone to change)

Now to decide which one or more to read.

Lots of possibilities here, but I'm looking at Road Rage by Ruth Rendell, which I bought as a duplicate so obviously have no memory of at all, though I must have read it since it was on the main shelves rather than the TBR shelf.

Other possibilities are Dream Boat by Marilyn Todd and Where Three Roads Meet by Sally Vickers

Oh, and I found one, as I was trying to figure out AwardsCAT (local awards... I thought for sure there wouldn't be anything on my tbr! But the one on my tbr fits here, too!):

Road Trip Rwanda / Will Ferguson

I'm currently reading I See You by Clare Mackintosh, which has a big focus on public transport so would be a great choice if it's on anybody's to read list.

I will search my shelf for other possibilities for myself. At the moment I'm thinking of To Ride the Wind by Peter Watt. Maybe the second book after Zoo Station by David Downing.....

I might read one of these from my shelves:
Passage to India by E. M. Forster
The Lost Traveller by Antonia White
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

I would like to read Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening for November.

>4 sturlington: I'd say yes, absolutely! How would traffic work without maps?

>12 Jackie_K: I'm really (not) sorry! ;)

I'm happy to see so many interesting suggestions. I'm not yet sure what I will read myself, probably one the books I own/have borrowd about (leisure) cycling...

>19 Chrischi_HH: Great, thanks. I have a book called Mapping the Interior, which I will read.

>9 DeltaQueen50: Thanks, Judy! The Dark Road to Mercy is my RL book group's November book.

>21 RidgewayGirl: That definitely seems to be the one I am most leaning towards!

I'm planning to finally read Dust Tracks on a Road: an Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston (which I had planned to read for two other CATs this year) and/or Rails to Penn State: the Story of the Bellefonte Centralby Michael Bezilla and Jack Rudnicki.

I might go for Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris for this one.

I have so many for this category that it's hard to decide where to begin:

I See You by Clare Mackintosh - a BB from roro8
Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri
Running Blind by Lee Child
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I’ll take you there by Wally Lamb
The Silver Locomotive or Blood on the Line by Edward Marston
Road Rage by Richard Matheson et al
The Runner by Peter May
The way home by George Pelecanos
Born to run by Bruce Springsteen
The mapping of love and death by Jacqueline Winspear
Chasing Venus by Andrea Wulf
Great Australian Journeys by Graham Seal

I just realized I've also got Flight of the Intruder slated for next month because of the CultureCat's focus on war, so that will be a second read for this category for me!

>24 sushicat: I read that a couple of years ago, but as I now have the 2nd and 3rd in the series on my TBR shelves, I could re-read it.

I'm hoping that path is road related enough so that I can read Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior for this CAT.

PATH stands for Port Authority Trans Hudson - which is the transit system linking NY and NJ run by the Port Authority of NY and NJ. I'd say it counts.....not that my opinion is official....

>28 VioletBramble: Path absolutely counts - why not use a smaller path with your bike to get around a traffic jam? ;)

And my book club is reading Murder on the Orient Express next month. Synchronicity!

I think I'll read Fahrradfahren by Johann-Günther König which tells the history of the bicycle. This year the bicycle celebrates its 200th birthday, so I think this is the perfect occasion.

I'm planning on reading Crash by J. G. Ballard.

Already finished my two selections for this theme. Well, they were both short! Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones and a reread of Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie -- both four stars. I'm planning to see the Kenneth Branagh film of Orient Express when it comes out later in the month.

I'm making good progress with Silesian Station by David Downing, half way through.

I'm counting Taxi here, where a young woman tells of her adventures as a taxi driver in Hamburg. Mildly amusing.

I read This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash and although it wasn't as strong as his first book, I really enjoyed this story of family, revenge and forgiveness.

I've completed Driving Force by Dick Francis a good suspense/mystery escape read set in an area of England where there are numerous horse racing trainers. To combat the success of better trainers, a trainer releases ticks that carry a virus to cause disability and death to his competitor's horses.

The central character owns a business that transports horses for the trainers throughout England as well as France and Italy so there is a lot of driving.

Just to prove that I can't keep any promises made with lists (see above) I read The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin. This is a hugely funny mystery story. The main character finds a toyshop open in the middle of the night. When he investigates he finds a body, then he is immediately knocked out. Next day when he returns with the police, there is no body, in fact, no toyshop. I really enjoyed it.

I finished Silesian Station, by David Downing. It was a perfect choice for this theme. A lot of time was spent on trains. It was a good continuation from Zoo Station.

>39 VivienneR: I love Crispin's mysteries & that one is my favorite in the Fen series!

>41 leslie.98: Leslie, if you read a Crispin recently, that must have been the source of my bullet!

>39 VivienneR: Which reminds me, Frequent Hearses is on my virtual TBR shelf. That would work for this challenge.

I finally got around to reading Flight of the Intruder, and really enjoyed it! Thanks for giving me a push in its direction with this theme, >1 Chrischi_HH: ! Full review written for anyone interested :)

>43 Robertgreaves: Frequent Hearses would be an excellent choice! Any of Crispin's might work because Gervase Fen is known for driving an old sports car - named Lily Christine III.

>40 Roro8: I'm glad to hear that, Silesian Station is also high up on my TBR. :)

>44 whitewavedarling: Thanks for sharing, sounds like a good choice!

For my book club I just read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Although it is not about transportation, the characters are constantly taking helicopters to go anywhere, and the noise of helicopter traffic is mentioned several times.

Love Walked In / Marisa de los Santos
3.5 stars

Cornelia works in a cafe and meets someone whom she starts dating. Clare is 11-years old and having a hard time with her mother, as her mother seems to be acting very odd. Clare knows something is wrong and is afraid her mother is sick.

The book started ok for me, but got better. It was ok at the start while I got to know the characters and what was going on. It really picked up for me in the middle after Cornelia and Clare met, but I have very mixed feelings about the ending. I’m settling on rating it “good” at 3.5 stars.

COMPLETED Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin.

I read The Face of Stranger. While it isn't specifically about transportation, Detective Monk is who he is due to a carriage acccident.

I finished an early Inspector Wexford mystery, The Best Man to Die by Ruth Rendell. The book starts of with two deaths related to our traffic theme: the death of a woman in a car accident and the killing of a lorry driver.

Well, I finished The Zoo on the Road to Nablus, and I wrote my rant/review. It wasn't at all what I'd hoped for, so although you might find my rant/review entertaining if you want to take a peak, I certainly wouldn't recommend looking at more than the book's cover...

>52 whitewavedarling: That was a good review. I think calling out these types of books is a very good thing.

>53 sturlington:, Thanks. Trying to get through the book, I went from being confused, to mildly annoyed, to the point where I was joking about buying a ticket to fly overseas and yell at the vet at the center of the book. If nothing else, I hope the review and me being so infuriated saves someone else the disappointment!

I just finished Throne of Jade, where Laurence and his dragon Temeraire spend most of the time at sea sailing to China. Loved it.

>52 whitewavedarling: Wow, that's a great rant. Incidentally, the book I am reading for this very RandomCAT challenge is also a journey in Palestine, and I just read about the author's visit to that zoo a couple of days ago. He was looking more at it in the wider context of Qalqilya being almost completely surrounded by the Israeli Separation Barrier, and the locals' steadfast determination to keep the zoo open to maintain some semblance of normality for the local population. He didn't mention the vet though, he referred to a manager who he spoke to but it was someone different. (The book I'm reading is Mark Thomas' Extreme Rambling (touchstone doesn't seem to be working), he's walking the length of the Separation Barrier. I'm really enjoying the book so far).

>56 Jackie_K:, I may have to look the book up--I read 'zoo books' when I get a chance, but I've also read quite a bit about the Middle East and enjoyed what I've learned. Most of what I've read has been from the POV of either military or NGO members, so that would be a change for me. This book I read does mention a manager and various city officials who feel the same--that it's important to keep the zoo open on behalf of local citizens, a semblance of normalcy, etc. From what I could tell, it was really just the vet at the center of the book who was pushing for taking in more wildlife and expanding the focus of the zoo, when reasonably, they couldn't take care of the upkeep for the animals and facilities they already had. I have no doubt that a book about the manager or one of the zoo keepers might have made for a more meaningful, and less horrifying, read!

>57 whitewavedarling: It's definitely worth a read. Mark Thomas is a well-known comedian and activist in the UK, and I actually saw his stage show when he was touring after doing this walk - it was wonderful and I laughed till I cried. The book fleshes out the show, and although it's not been as laugh out loud funny, I am still loving it. What I really liked about this is that while walking along the barrier his aim was always to walk through both the West Bank and Israel, to see the issues from both sides. And whilst his sympathies are more naturally allied with the Palestinians, this is no hatchet job and he is very reflective both of the political situation itself and his reactions to it.

>58 Jackie_K:, book bullet received :)

And that's Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun completed. Great book!

I read Your Pal Archie #1 by Ty Templeton, which features a story about someone learning to drive.

I finished Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, which I enjoyed very much and which features a journey by boat.

Road Trip Rwanda / Will Ferguson
4 stars

Author Will Ferguson has a friend in Calgary, Canada, who is originally from Rwanda, Jean-Claude. A 19-year old Jean-Claude, a Tutsi, got out of the country mere months before the genocide in 1994. The two take a trip to Rwanda for a few weeks and Jean-Claude tours Will around.

I learned that Rwanda has come back from the genocide socially and economically ahead of the game, ahead of other African countries, and ahead of many other countries in the world. It’s an impressive turn-around; of course, the ghosts of the genocide are still everywhere in the country. The book includes a brief history of what led to the genocide and the genocide itself, and of course, we learned more about various things that happened in various places throughout the country as Will and Jean-Claude took their trip.

There were a couple of respites from genocide “memories”: they did a tour in the Virunga Mountains to see Dian Fossey’s gorillas; they also went to a national park, where the wildlife is protected. I’ve read about both the genocide and Dian Fossey and the gorillas, so much of the information wasn’t new to me, but this was a reminder. Ferguson often adds humour to his travel books, but this one is a tough one to do that with. There is a bit, but not as much as in his other books. Overall, I thought this was a very good book to get information about the tough topic of the Rwandan genocide, in addition to updates about the country.

>63 LibraryCin: I've taken a BB for that, onto the wishlist it goes!

>64 Jackie_K: Hope you like it!

I'm still reading my book for this - Turn Right At Machu Picchu - and won't finish it before month end. It's the story of how the author Mark Adams decides to follow the path that Hiram Bingham followed when he discovered Machu Picchu in 1911 in Peru. It is very interesting but I'm only reading a few pages at a time as RL is keeping me busy.

I am nearly done with Daring to Drive I won't finish it tonight, but will post comments once I am done. So far I would definitely recommend it to those attempting to understand the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

I started reading Traffic but won't finish it by the end of the day. However, I did finish The Little Prince which was a cute little book about a prince who travels to various planets in a quest to learn more about life. Lots of journeys for the little fellow.

>63 LibraryCin: BB for me as well. Would be a perfect fit for my African category this year, but I'm afraid I'll have to save it for later.

>68 LittleTaiko: The Little Prince is on of my favourites!

I'm also setill reading my selection, Fahrradfahren, telling the history of bicycles. It's very readable and interesting, but I just don_t have much reading time these days. I'm still counting it, though.

>69 Chrischi_HH: Hope you like it, as well! :-)

I'm counting Maria Pavlovna : Die frühen Tagebücher der Erbherzogin von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach here, because she spends most of the time covered in these diaries on the road. She left Weimar because of the Napoleonic Wars twice, once to stay with her relatives in Schleswig-Holstein, the second time in 1813/1814 she went to Vienna. The wars are barely mentioned, these diaries were mostly meant as an aide-mémoire for herself and tell of the people she met and the places she visited. Quite interesting, and written entirely in French.

Couple of days late, but I read Three Men in a Boat--To Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K Jerome--what a riot! Two weeks of misadventures on the Thames for 3 men and a fox terrier. Fiction from the 1880s, that even today made me laugh out loud many times.

>72 kac522: Interesting - I read that earlier this year and found it pretty dull! But hey, life would be dull if we all agreed on everything! I'm glad you had a better reading experience than me :)

>73 Jackie_K: I guess I was expecting it to be humor that I wouldn't understand--19th century in-jokes and language. But there was way much more that I could laugh at than I expected, although I will admit that the last 30 or 40 pages seemed to drop off in humor.

Earlier this year I read The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith, which I didn't find funny at all, but is supposed to be the height of British humor. It was also written in the late 19th century, but the references went right over my head.