Flowers In Hotel Rooms Volume V by Sarah Bodman

Lots of travel can sound glamorous but in reality is mostly time spent in airports, stations and hotel rooms. This series of books has helped occupy my time by imagining what the characters in the books I read would be doing if they were here. For Volume V, I read Gogol’s Dead Souls, looking at a gilded mirror in a London hotel room thinking of Chichikov’s purchases. In Melbourne, I read the Jerilderie Letter alongside Peter Carey’s manuscripts for The True History of the Kelly Gang. In The Netherlands, working with Tom Sowden, for John Fante’s Ask The Dust, I appropriate the palm tree remnants from an Ed Ruscha tribute video we made on the train. In Scotland I wept with laughter at an empty fridge thanks to David Sedaris’s Barrel Fever, and after interviewing Dmitry Sayenko ate ‘mashed peas’ in Manchester for Daniil Kharms. I don’t know where I’m going next, or what I’ll be reading, but these days I look forward to any dull hotel or shabby motel—as I know anything could happen.