Reading a new book for review, I came across a reference to Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, first published in 1982, which I’d read about before but not read. I want to read it now, having found an extract on the website of NPR. The author says “life doesn’t happen along the interstates”, which is why he set out to explore America by driving on the smallest roads he could find. He went “Into the sticks, the boondocks, the burgs, backwaters, jerkwaters, the wide-spots-in-the-road, the don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it towns. Into those places where you say, ‘My god! What if you lived here!’ The Middle of Nowhere.”

NPR’s proofreaders must have had the day off, for the extract is littered with words and phrases runtogetherlikethis. But it’s still a treat.