Preparation: Tolstoy Gets the Axe

[Adele]

Leo Tolstoy, please accept my sincerest posthumous apologies.

But you failed to keep the cycle tourist in mind when you penned over 1,000 pages of "War and Peace".  Desperate to shed some weight from my panniers, here is what I did:
I went to Powells this afternoon.  I selected and purchased a lightly used copy of the venerable tome.  Upon arriving home, I reached for the kitchen shears and carefully severed the spine of the book so as to relieve the volume of 460 pages that I've already read.

Being a pragmatist more than a sentimentalist, I plan to use the pages that I've read as starter fuel for the evening's campfire.

This sweeping, rambling novel about 19th century rich Russians and their love woes and triumphs and faith crises, has nothing to do with travelling through the great Western States.  In the past, I've chosen my reading material to match the place.  "The Grapes of Wrath" for the West Coast.  "The River Why" as I biked through Central Oregon.  Perfect.  I was experiencing the landscape both through beautiful prose and my own eyes.

For this trip, I couldn't come up with the perfect literary match.  And honestly, I didn't try too hard, since I've been immersed in "War and Peace" for the past month or so, and I'm afraid that if I put it down now I'll never be able to keep straight again the outrageously difficult (for an American) Russian names.

If you have any suggestions for the perfect book to match a trip through the rugged American West, I welcome your input! But only after I've finished all 1.455 pages of Tolstoy.