Jason's Travels

Reading before bed is one of my simple little pleasures. I love sitting in bed, nightstand light on, flipping the pages away before I drift off to sleep; it's all very relaxing. Occasionally I fall asleep reading, only to wake up in the morning to find my book who knows where. Generally that says nothing to be about the quality of the book, just how tired I happen to be from the day. But, when I fall asleep reading when I'm not in bed and it's not late, I'd say that says something.

Mona Lisa's Pajamas: Diverting Dispatches From a Roving Reporter by A. Craig Copetas tended to lull me to sleep no matter where I was reading it. His writing is good, as it should be since the stories were initially for publications like The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, but I found it to be quite dry. Sometimes newspaper writing can be that way, particularly when it's for more traditional papers, but as Copteas said he expanded on his stories I guess I had expected more.

This is a compliation book, once again, and it's remarkably similar to another book I read recently, Americana by Hampton Sides, but more on the global level. Overall I liked Hampton's book, but I just couldn't get into Mona Lisa's Pajamas no matter how hard I tried. The stories didn't work for me and I didn't like the way they were put together either. For one, I'm not a golfer and reading several stories about golf in a row caused me to be irritated and frustrated. Things should've been spaced out better and organized differently in my opinion.

I appreciate the effort that A. Craig Copetas put into his book and understand the talent he has as a writer, which I would definitely say is far above mine as he writes for such honored newspapers, but I felt like I was wasting my time in reading it. Never once did I get into a flow in the book nor did I really get into a story. And any time I came close to it, I was abruptly pulled from it as it ended, each article only being a few pages in length generally.

If you enjoy travel writing that has a business twist to it and tend to read newspapers from cover-to-cover each day, then this is quite possibly the book for you. But, for my money, I would've gone somewhere else. Mona Lisa's Pajamas just never really caught me nor did it wow me past what I would see every morning in the newspaper over my breakfast. The writing is good, but news-like and dull most of the time.

NOTE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review. In no way would a complimentary copy of a book ever influence me to give it a positive review, just a fair shake of my opinion.