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Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Wi by Doreen Orion
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Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2…

by Doreen Orion

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1002154,805 (3.72)15
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Broadway (2008), Paperback, 304 pages

Member:DevourerOfBooks
Collections:Uncollected, Your libraryRating:***1/2
Tags:travelogue, memoirs
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Ah, the bus. You're either on it or you're off it. If you're a little slow on the uptake it's said that you ride the short bus. In the sixties we had, at one end of the spectrum, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, painting an old school bus psychedelic, naming it "Furthur" and [road]tripping their way across the country amid billowing marijuana smoke and sheets of Owsley's finest. At the other end of the spectrum was the squeaky-clean Partridge Family, a made-up family-turned-singing-group on TV, painting a school bus a suburban version of psychedlic and traveling to gigs in it.

Doreen Orion, a "pampered Princess from the Island of Long," and her husband Tim, who embarked in the summer of 2004 upon a yearlong road trip in a converted bus, fall on the Partridge family end of the bus spectrum. Their bus is a marvel, a home on wheels, with a twelve hundred dollar handblown glass sink in the bathroom and cherry cabinets in the kitchen. The only music to be heard are the many ringtones on Doreen's cell phone (unless you consider her whining to be a sub-sub-subgenre of music). And while there are drugs involved on Doreen and Tim's road trip, they are of the potent potable variety (in fact, each chapter begins with a funny recipe for a mixed drink).

Queen of the Road is the fairly delightful memoir of a neurotic psychiatrist and her well-grounded husband. Although Doreen Orion's voice is often grating and frequently self-centered (it's been many years since I've been away from the greater New York area, but how well I remember those Princesses...), she's also always funny. I'm not a drinker, but was sorely tempted while reading to try some of her recipes (in particular, I like the "Love Me Bender," which consists of passion fruit liqueur, champagne, and raspberry liqueur, and ends with the instructions, "Rest shaker on hip, gyrate, drink. If you can still recall that the love of your life is making you live on a bus, repeat.") ( )
BeckyJG | Jul 9, 2009 | 1 vote
When Doreen Orion wrote, on yoga, "What was the point of putting that much effort into doing something, just to think about nothing, when I was already so adept at thinking about nothing without making any effort at all?", I knew she was my kind of person. (I've tried yoga. I like the stretching. I don't like the premise. Like Doreen, the only way I can handle exercise is if I've got lots of things to distract me while I'm doing it.)

"Queen of the Road" is a book about a married couple who takes a year to travel the country in a retro-converted bus, with a dog and two cats. So it's a travel diary, in a way. But it felt more like a nice long talk with an old friend, the kind you don't get to see very often but is actually one of your favorite people in the world.

This "true tale of 47 states" was, there is no other word for it, a delight to read. From the first page to the last, Doreen's self-deprecating wit and humor, her honesty, and her dry sense of the absurd formed, for me, an instant bond between author and reader. I laughed out loud, not once, not a few times, but at least once a chapter, at something she'd said -- and not because the book is so outrageously funny, but because, as with the yoga quote above, I knew *exactly* what she meant and felt *exactly* the same way. And while some of that may be because we have a few preferences in common, I think it's mostly because Doreen is so honest, and says, in this book, exactly what she was thinking -- and what so many of us would as well in the same situation.

The writing is excellent and engaging, and the book was, unfortunately, a quick read; I was sorry when it was over, though the story comes to a natural end when Doreen and Tim's journey is over. The author's web site, www.doreenorion.com, has videos from her travels and her blog, which is well worth checking out. ( )
daisy32 | Jan 17, 2009 |  
A good read. Most of the travelogues I read are concerned with younger people traveling, so it was interesting to read the adventures of an older couple traveling by bus. They certainly had some interesting experiences. ( )
skinglist | Jan 10, 2009 |  
This was a funny and heartwarming memoir of a couple's year traveling the country in their conversion bus. The author has a gift for poking fun at herself, her husband, and all the experiences they had - without being caustic or unkind. There was real affection in the writing and some "self-realization" without being heavy-handed. Very enjoyable. ( )
tjsjohanna | Oct 11, 2008 |  
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0767928539, Paperback)

A pampered Long Island princess hits the road in a converted bus with her wilderness-loving husband, travels the country for one year, and brings it all hilariously to life in this offbeat and romantic memoir.

Doreen and Tim are married psychiatrists with a twist: She’s a self-proclaimed Long Island princess, grouchy couch potato, and shoe addict. He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman. When Tim suggests “chucking it all” to travel cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen asks, “Why can’t you be like a normal husband in a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?” But she soon shocks them both, agreeing to set forth with their sixty-pound dog, two querulous cats—and no agenda—in a 340-square-foot bus.

Queen of the Road is Doreen’s offbeat and romantic tale about refusing to settle; about choosing the unconventional road with all the misadventures it brings (fire, flood, armed robbery, and finding themselves in a nudist RV park, to name just a few). The marvelous places they visit and delightful people they encounter have a life-changing effect on all the travelers, as Doreen grows to appreciate the simple life, Tim mellows, and even the pets pull together. Best of all, readers get to go along for the ride through forty-seven states in this often hilarious and always entertaining memoir, in which a boisterous marriage of polar opposites becomes stronger than ever.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400)

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