Kate and I have been swamped with projects all summer and I’ve also been off on a western road trip, so postings here at CaliforniaAuthors have been lighter than usual. I’m just back from Wyoming (Gotta love a place where buffalo and moose still roam the roadside!) and wanted to share two great books that I took along. — Donna

• Sun After Dark is Pico Iyer’s latest collection, chronicling his treks from California to Tibet. Pico writes, “I know in my own case that a trip has really been successful if I come back sounding strange even to myself; if, in some sense, I never come back at all, but remain up at night unsettled by what I’ve seen. I bring back receipts, postcards, the jottings I have made, but none of them really tells the story of what I’ve encountered; that remains somewhere between what I can’t say and what I can’t know.”

• Thomas Steinbeck’s Down to a Soundless Sea proved to be the perfect read-aloud companion during long stretches of serpentine mountain highway. “My brother and I were particularly blessed with a family convention that involved storytelling,” he writes at the start of the book. “We sprang like noisy chicks from a gaggle of writers, composers, and entertaining raconteurs. My father, the ancient gander of our flock, was particularly fond of a ripping good yarn cleverly and deftly told.” Thom spins seven of his own favorites, yarns set along the California coast and the Big Sur circa early 1900s and peopled with sailors, ranchers, cowboys, indians, immigrants, miscreants and a remarkable doctor whose horseback housecalls involve weeks on the trail and who’ll splint a broken leg for two bucks. My favorite story is a magical tale called “The Night Guide.”