Rating: 
Summary: Why leave home, Larry?
Review: I don't understand why McMurtry felt it was necessary to leave his Archer City Bookstore to wander the highways of America. He doesnt' stop to see anything of any interest, doesn't talk to anybody, eats at predictable tollway fast food stops, sleeps at tollway motels and makes most of his observations at a speed in excess of 80 miles an hour. Most of the time he is simply using the places he whizzes past as a launching point for his insufferable ruminations. Couldn't he have done this from the comfort of his own home? If he wasn't a famous author he never would have got this tepid travelogue past the receptionists desk at the publisher's office. To me, McMurtry makes life on the road a grim and mundane prospect.
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Summary: a curmudgeon sails America's roads
Review: I liked this book. But I like Larry McMurtry's writing. I didn't think I would like the book because it seemed pointless to take so many road trips just for the sake of driving. McMurtry shares lots of interesting observations about life and the people he met durning his lifetime. He rarely interacts with anyone or sees the sites, on this trip. But he talks about inspirations for scenes in his novels, as he passes the places he set the characters in. He also share interesting tibits from his life. It's not a humorous book, and he likely offends many people along the roads he travels, by insulting their habits, community or driving skills, but this book is an interesting look into his life.
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Summary: A bit slim...
Review: I love Larry McMurtry. I have enjoyed everything he has written. But I have to admit that I find this book a bit on the fluff side. His observations, stories, and reminiscences were all rather interesting, but I thought that for the price of this book, there wasn't quite enough of them. It's almost as if he's growing more and more prolific at the expense of substance (I feel very similarly about Crazy Horse). The bang for the buck isn't to be found in this book.
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Summary: Make that "Lonesome Roads", Mr. M....
Review: I love the works of Larry McMurtry. I love travel books. I love books about the long and winding road. This smallish book fits all three criteria. Be advised, the author warns the reader right at the get-go that he is not going to write about the people he meets on the way, this is not going to be some sightseeing tour. He is going to get in his car and drive, and his book will be about driving as fast as possible down major highways. Of course this would be beyond boring .(The following is NOT in the book, but I imagine a highway-driving book would read something like: "going 80 MPH on dry road, adjusted air vents, changed radio station 5 times, yawned non-stop till lunch, saw 3 white tractortrailers, 4 gray tractortrailers....") Mr. McMurtry does not inflict a diary of his driving habits upon us, but he does throw in quite a bit of interesting American history regarding the states he rips through, especially regarding past battles with American Indians. Though he does not get out and mingle with the public at rest stops or museums or anywhere else, he does make note of all those museums he blasts past, and makes observations on the weather, the amount of sky proportional to land/water, the amount of litter state-by-state, and of course the never-ending ebb and flow of highway traffic. He also writes about authors and books he admires, and provides anecdotes about his own life and part-time job of book collecting. This is an interesting book, confined mainly to the west and south of the country, the east being too cold and gray for Mr. McMurtry. It is well written (well, duh!) but short, and not very in-depth. "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat Moon is a better example of the travel-through-American genre which Mr. M points out at the start.
Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: If you enjoy road trips, and you enjoy our national highway system we have in the United States, and you have spent anytime on them, you will enjoy this book. Larry McMurtry has a drier than sand dust in the Sahara Desert sense of humor, but it is there and if you like sarcasm, you will dig this book. Larry spends time on many highways and interstates and tells it like he sees it, I love the fact he is so honest in this work. He talks about Missouri like it should be talked about, which is to not say much at all. His comparisons of Minnesota cornfields and Key Largo are unique to him alone. This book is a great travel companion, but it is not going to set the world on fire. But, I do not think the author had that in mind when he wrote it anyway. An area that the author fully succeeds in is the weaving into his journeys the stories of various authors from whatever geographical region he happens to be traversing. Good work, solid B- Joseph Dworak
Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: If you enjoy road trips, and you enjoy our national highway system we have in the United States, and you have spent anytime on them, you will enjoy this book. Larry McMurtry has a drier than sand dust in the Sahara Desert sense of humor, but it is there and if you like sarcasm, you will dig this book. Larry spends time on many highways and interstates and tells it like he sees it, I love the fact he is so honest in this work. He talks about Missouri like it should be talked about, which is to not say much at all. His comparisons of Minnesota cornfields and Key Largo are unique to him alone. This book is a great travel companion, but it is not going to set the world on fire. But, I do not think the author had that in mind when he wrote it anyway. An area that the author fully succeeds in is the weaving into his journeys the stories of various authors from whatever geographical region he happens to be traversing. Good work, solid B- Joseph Dworak
Rating:
Summary: Interesting.
Review: In "Roads", Mr. Larry McMurtry travels the Interstate Highways System of the USA. Along the way, he comments on certain places and tells of his adventures. He also links history to the places he visits or passes by. I found it interesting, then again I'm what they call a "Road Geek" ;) . You don't have to enjoy roads and highways to enjoy Mr. McMurtry's book, however.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting.
Review: In "Roads", Mr. Larry McMurtry travels the Interstate Highways System of the USA. Along the way, he comments on certain places and tells of his adventures. He also links history to the places he visits or passes by. I found it interesting, then again I'm what they call a "Road Geek" ;) . You don't have to enjoy roads and highways to enjoy Mr. McMurtry's book, however.
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Summary: Road Skill
Review: It appears that all roads lead to Archer City, Texas. At least if you happen to be along for the ride with Larry McMurtry in his book Roads: Driving America's Great Highways; his tales of recently taken long rides, as he leaves home to head back for it. Eschewing all things touristy, though occasionally treating us to lesser known road fare, McMurtry shares with us what he admires and dislikes about car travel, travel writers, the highways he uses and avoids, and the places he passes through, oftentimes at eighty miles an hour. He drives from dawn to dusk; if he stops, he stops for gas and the occasional bowl of soup or roadside burrito. In all ways the trip is informative, insightful, and often amusing as McMurtry relates both past and present recollections and observations. He shares personal remembrances of people and places he's known and been; he is generous with his family histories, and some personal pains. He seems more the travelling book scout than the novelist he is as he talks about travel writers and their works and connects them to the places he is passing through. It is a pleasure to just sit in the passenger's seat and listen, you want the trip to last forever and you will never ask, "are we there yet?"
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Summary: A biker's perspective...
Review: Larry McMurtry loves the American interstate system. Popular author of some 30 novels and screenplays, including Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, the Pulitzer Prize winner surprised his readers and the publishing world with a travelogue that had no purpose or destination. For example, the author and rare book dealer leaves his home town of Archer City, Texas, takes a bird to Duluth at the nose of Lake Superior, and drives south in a rented nondescript Lincoln on highway 35 passing Des Moines, Kansas City, Wichita, Oklahoma City and 1100 miles later, back home. This scenario he repeats from all four corners and beyond, driving the 10, the 40, the 70, 80, and 90. For north-south he travels the 5, the 25, 35, and 75. "The 95 I intend to ignore." It's advisable to clutch an Atlas (as I did) while reading this account. Passenger-less and clocking about 700 miles per day, McMurtry ruminates, reminisces, and romances upon the views seen outside his car window. He shares knowledge of present and past authors who homesteaded in the plains, mountains and deserts he bypasses. He reflects upon odd bits of folklore: the shrine of the Holy Tortilla in Lake Arthur, N.M., where around 1980 "the face of Jesus appeared on a tortilla a poor Hispanic woman was cooking." He reviews atrocities and dredges up obscure scraps of native American history: how the Indians of Acoma killed a party of tax collectors in 1599, and how Governor Juan de Onate retaliated by cutting one foot off any male Acoma Indian over 20 years old. Traveling the highways with none of the common distractions and equipped with only a fat, prolific, literary head, McMurtry allows himself a bottomless tank of gas on all manners pertaining to the art of observation. "The midwest, one might note, has been the home, or at least the venting ground, for quite a few of our natural-born killers." He goes on to mention the 1958 invention of spree killing by the notorious Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, who killed 11 people, including Fugate's mother. How the stories in Capote's In Cold Blood took place in Kansas, "which is also where Timothy McVeigh made his bomb." And how the term "going postal" is owed to a postal worker from Oklahoma. McMurtry attributes this midwestern deviance to a pure lack of glamour. "If the American media promises us anything, it's glamour...Glamour has become part of the American promise, but it's hard to scare up much of it in the Midwest." This profound lack "produces a distinct kind of disappointment, which, in some, becomes murderous resentment." It's the wide-open spaces that inspire the most amusing thoughts. The author writes: "In the famous painting American Gothic it's the pitchfork I notice first. Is the farmer going to stick that pitchfork into a bale of hay, or is he going to stick it into his wife?" If you were the type to judge a book by its chapter headings, then you surely would be put off by: "April. The 75 from Detroit to the Sault Ste. Marie. Michigan Highway 28, the 39, the 90-94, the 29." A road book like this would not be complete without weird roadside encounters. A chairman's swivel chair stands upright in the middle of an empty four-laner. A tumbleweed stampede, big as Volkswagens, on highway 10 west. A truck bearing a large sign that reads: SELL YOUR BABIES. Some details he mentions are better left unsaid: "Lawton is a tough town. I saw no reason to linger in it, but I did stop to buy a candy bar on Gore Boulevard, the street named for Gore Vidal's grandfather, the blind senator." In terms of sheer beauty to be discovered on our Eisenhower-hatched interstate system, the 90 from Wyoming through Montana, the 40 through Arizona, and the 10 between Tucson and El Paso, are patches worth their weight in a ride. For hardcore McMurtry fans who aspire to crawl inside the author's mind, this Bud's for you. What's interesting but not surprising, is how McMurtry uses these excursions to clear his mind for the luxurious daydreaming these roadtrips invariably produce. Daydreams that invoke fictional characters, suggest themes and locations, and invite plots for stories to come.
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