Customer Reviews

Booked on the Morning Train: A Journey Through America

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While the book was a good read, it spent to much time dealing with his friends that he stayed with. He spent way to little time on how train travel works, what his experiences were aboard AMTRAK, and the beauty of traveling by rail. His stay in New Orleans, with a friend, was interesting, but not why I bought the book.

Loved this travel adventure. Sad when I reached the end of the book! The author really put you in the mood of the locale, people and weather. I've traveled and loved the train many times and it was nice to read about a lot of the locations we've been to. Although he "roughed it" more than I have or would have. I traveled coach once and never again.

A number of years ago, the author set out to do something I've always wanted to do - travel all over the country using Amtrak. It takes him about 6 weeks, and he hits all the major routes - the Crescent, the City of New Orleans, the Empire Builder, the Lake Shore Limited ... He has plenty of adventures along the way, meets tons of interesting people, and stops to see the sights and smell the roses too.

What really makes this book, though, is the prose. Here's an example:

"And yet the flow of the day entranced me. In the morning, clouds had filled the sky over West Texas, veiling the sky with a fibrous web, the light milky and shadowless, muting the green of the sagebrush and the laminated earth tones of the striated bluffs. Later, the clouds broke and thinned to reveal a porcelain blue sky and began to pile into puffy cotton balls that hovered in the distance like balloons... For a stretch in New Mexico, the soft grass-blanketed mountains in the distance gave way to eroded buttes, like crumbling Sphinxes, with knobby knees sculpted into their flanks by washes and gulleys. They were bare and gritty and inhospitable, and nothing grew on them except small creosote bushes like clumps of green mold..."

I could go on and on, but I'm afraid my fingers would cramp up. ;^) His prose is as entrancing when he describes urban landscapes, train stations, the people he meets, and the thoughts he puts together on travel, solitude, and the magic of trains.

That said, I'm not totally sure who I'd recommend this book to. It's definitely not for your basic rail fan. I think I'd recommend it more for anyone who appreciates good prose and enjoys more sophisticated travel writing (and maybe has a soft spot for trains). For me personally, it was a great combination of many things I love - pure poetry.

If you like trains and train travel, you'll enjoy this book. Not all chapters are equally interesting and the book is "dated" at this point, but for train enthusiasts, it's a nice way to spend a few hours.