Books like A Tramp Across the Continent — picked by fans

How perfect to go on a road trip with one of my favorite writers plus his gentlemanly, loveable dog!

I smile just thinking about this book. I was delighted every step of the way. I felt like I was in the passenger seat, handing biscuits to Charley, stopping to meet strangers, and ruminating on how the USA has changed over the decades.

I loved hearing his thoughts in his older, wiser years, after his great successes, but still passionate, or slyly ironic, on so many topics. I love that he’s matter-of-fact in discussing disillusionment, loneliness, racism, or anything – but he’s hopeful in the end, always.

I want to buy a stack of these and hand them out as gifts.

Arguably, people and dogs—initially in the guise of wolves—have been wandering the world together since they first met on the trail of the big game they were both hunting. Dogs were generally more amicable, low-maintenance traveling companions, serving as camp guards, hunters, bed warmers, social secretaries, and occasional sneak thieves.  

A prototype for traveling dog in American letters is Seaman, a young Newfoundland Meriwether Lewis obtained to accompany the corps of discovery on its westward explorations. Seaman and his exploits dot the pages of The Journals of Lewis and Clark (1814), a great resource and compelling read for anyone hoping to understand the history of the American West. 

A book that falls between Lummis and Steinbeck chronologically is William Francis Butler’s The Wild North Land: Being the Story of a Winter Journey, with Dogs, Across Northern North America, an account of his retracing of the route of the 18th-century Scottish explorer Alexander McKenzie who traversed much of Canada from Lake Chipewyan in Alberta to the Pacific Ocean. Butler had a dog team whose leader was Cerf-Vola, who distinguished himself for his sagacity and strength. Ultimately, Butler retired him from sled duty to dog companion. That relationship did not prevent Butler from giving the dog to an acquaintance when he returned to England, saying that it broke his heart when he had to lay aside his emotions for “the sterner stuff of civilization.”

The great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was a journalist before he found his true calling - he designed New York’s Central Park, Roland Park in Baltimore, and many other green spaces across the U.S. Olmsted toured East Texas in the early 1850s as a correspondent for the New York Daily Times. An ardent abolitionist, he reported on the cruelty of slavery, which he found permeated the society. The white slaveholders lived in almost constant dread of their insurrection and escape, which were constant. Occasionally, the slaves themselves had dogs who would engage the hounds used by slave owners and overseers to track and capture the runaways. Olmsted used the nom de plume Yoeman and he compiled his reports and journals into a trilogy that looks at the institution of slavery in its last decade. His companion for much of his journey was a bull terrier named Judy, a… show more.

I was pulled in by the concept of the birth of a private eye.

Easy Rollins, a guy with no background in law enforcement, a day laborer, accepts money to find a missing woman, and a shamus is born. Did I mention that Easy is black, and has to deal with all the prejudices and difficulties that entails?

In addition to being a great whodunit of who and why, it’s a cool trip riding along with Easy on his maiden voyage into gumshoe land.

This is a personal favourite as it’s the Ellroy novel that carries the biggest emotional punch. Although it didn’t match the sales of its predecessor The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere is a more accomplished novel. The setting is LA, 1950. A murder plot is interweaved with the politics of the Red Scare, and a Hollywood milieu at the height of the film noir age. This is the novel that proved Ellroy was a literary writer, and not just a genre one.

This is a memoir about being a writer—and failing. With scholarly rigor and tenderhearted sympathy, Specktor excavates the lives of artists forgotten (Carol Eastman, Eleanor Perry), underappreciated (Thomas McGuane, Hal Ashby), and notorious (Warren Zevon, Michael Cimino), while always circling back to his own benighted Hollywood upbringing, complete with a lovely tribute to his mother, a failed screenwriter. This is an angry, sad, but always somehow joyful book about not hitting it big, and I've never read anything quite like it.

I absolutely loved this book. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read, it’s heartfelt and hilarious. After running his own bookshop in Seattle, Andrew Bloomfield moves to Hollywood to become a screenwriter and discovers a colony of feral cats living in his backyard. He was not a cat person. After witnessing one too many raccoon and coyote attacks and hungry, crying kittens, he and his two female housemates intervene and start caring for these wild yet vulnerable cats who transform his life. With his sharp wit and keen eye for detail, Bloomfield is a brilliant storyteller. I got completely caught up in the soap-opera dramas and death-defying moments of these cats, along with the heartaches and triumphs of rescuing them.

A film noir in book form, Davis’ astute, visceral, and impassioned chronicle of Los Angeles at the turn of the millennium offers a dystopian view of future urban society.

I was recommended this book by my secondary school geography teacher shortly before starting university. Although my teacher did not know it, I had been questioning whether I’d made the right choice in choosing Geography for my degree, but this book captivated me like no other and assuaged my academic concerns. 

Los Angeles is a world-famous city that means very different things to different people. Davis shows how Los Angeles is simultaneously a utopia and a dystopia, a place of gated communities and private police forces, where libraries look like fortresses and prisons, on the outside at least, resemble futuristic hotels.

Over three decades after the first edition’s publication, this book remains essential reading for anyone seeking a sobering peek into… show more.

Elroy wrote many other books before he took on this epic noir crime novel (one in a quartet). He made his bones in writing, and it's evident in his skill level, story, and prose. Elroy excels in this novel (and the other three) in voice. And voice is the Big Kahuna in writing, it’s the everything in writing and Elroy has it in spades.

Another great addition to the above is the length (because you don’t want this book to ever end) and that it’s a historical novel that absolutely captures the time period and adds the historical nuance to all the characters.