The New American Road Trip Mixtape

by Brendan Leonard

When your life plan explodes, you ask yourself the big What do I really need in life? How can I make my life a work of art? Should I buy a house? Have kids? What is a life?Following in Kerouac and Steinbeck's tire tracks, a 32-year-old, post-breakup Brendan Leonard hits the road in search of healing and a new, post-economic-downturn American Dream. Sleeping in the back of a beat-up station wagon, he seeks answers—and hopefully, the occasional shower—in the postcard-worthy places of the American West. Part ballad to the romance of the road and part heart-searching treatise on the American Dream, The New American Road Trip Mixtape is Leonard's raw, often hilarious, barstool storytelling at its best.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Adventure, Outdoors, Biography Memoir, Memoir, Nature

238 pages, Paperback

First published July 11, 2013

About the author

Brendan Leonard is the creator of Semi-Rad.com and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Outside, CNN.com, Adventure Journal, Alpinist, Climbing, High Country News, Adventure Cyclist, and dozens of other publications. He lives in Missoula, Montana.

Reviews

[Mike Zyskowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me forever to read because it gave me so much to think about. More a journal than a story, with thoughts and emotion still raw open wounds, asking questions that hit home. Every time I picked this up I'd eventually find myself staring into space, re-living the past, trying to make sense of the present, pondering the future . . .

Aside from that, his is an interesting experience that I'd like to hear more of in one form or another, and I'm now seriously jonzing for a road trip and some camping! Some pics would have been nice, but oh well. It's definitely a recommended read, though I warn you, prepare to find yourself staring off into space thinking . . .

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The road calls to all of us at some point in our lives. This is a book about love, loss and looking for a home. Leonard takes to the road on an extended climbing trip after a painful breakup. As he meets new people along the way and gets to know his old friends better, he sees how "home" looks different for different people, and falls in love with the American West. If you need a little inspiration, or just a good story to get sucked into, I recommend The New American Road Trip Mixtape.

[Stacey P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book - one of my favorite reads in quite a while! There were just so many ideas that resonated with me. I'm never going to go live in my car indefinitely, but getting out there experiencing amazing things, and asking yourself what makes a life and a home - those are things I can relate to. Read it.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

With its heart firmly in the right place, and inspiration drawn from America's natural and literary greats, this is a very fine foray into trying to pencil in what it all means without actually needing to find a cut-and-dry answer. Couldn't quite "love" it though. Maybe, in all honesty, it cut too close to the bone, making me too self-conscious whilst reading. But I also felt the writing was a bit sophomoric, relying on quotes of greater authors too often, spilling too many random anecdotes from too many random friends, and falling into a sloppy rhythm at times, as if written on the steering wheel of a wildly veering beat up old car.

Oh, right. So it was...

All in all it's a good sermon on dirtbaggery and driving anywhere to find (or lose) ourselves.

[Julie Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

hands down the best book to kick off 2014.

[Payton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written more as a journal than anything else. However, it is very insightful. Especially in regard to society's definition of the American Dream (job, family, house, etc...). Brendan offers the opinion that this might not be the dream for everyone. I enjoyed the book even with the lack of structure that it has. I would recommend it to anyone that would like a first person view of what some would consider to be the ultimate road trip.

[Grace Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Preaching to the choir

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I sat outside in the shadow of the Wasatch mountains and smiled while reading. It is a beautiful ode to the west and the mountains I love so much.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book as a Christmas present for my girlfriend, entirely on a whim and with no more context than a few Amazon reviews. I did not realize that it would read very much like the sort of book I might write in ten years.

Leonard draws his inspiration from climbing, mountaineering, skiing and seeing the world through a lowly lens. His book chronicles a post-breakup period of dirtbagging around America in the back of a Subaru Outback. He even starts his odyssey in Denver. The similarity to my own sensibilities was simultaneously comforting and disconcerting.

The book is a quick read— I read the entire thing in the span of a few hours.

It is even printed double-spaced, like an assignment you would turn in for your writing class. It was self-published, which fits the ethos of the writing. The copyright page contains five lines. All that blank space is exciting.

“The New American Road Trip Mixtape” is adventure writing— quick, breezy and inspirational. To the sort of person who can identify with Leonard’s passions, the book will practically read itself. Those who can’t appreciate the appeal of the modern dirtbag lifestyle won’t find much of substance here.

It’s telling that two months since Christmas, I am the first one in the household to finish this book.

“The New American Road Trip Mixtape” differs from the writing I give you here in one key way. “The New American Road Trip Mixtape” is not a celebration of youth, but rather a chronicle of the end of youth. The book is about Leonard’s pivot into a deeper understanding of the world, not simply a celebration of living. The story is very much that of an inflection point in life.

“What is a life?”

This phrase is repeated often throughout the book. The full question, “what is a good life?” goes largely elided and unanswered. In the final pages of the book, Leonard sums it up as well as he can:

“There was something in everyone I knew in Utah, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and California figuring it out as they went, stubbing their toes and tripping sometimes, turning around after false starts and making the second or third try really count, making it as forever as we know how anymore.”

In the end, Leonard is quintessentially young, even as he chronicles his search for the way to age gracefully.

(You can find more writing by Brendan Leonard at his blog, semi-rad.com)

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New American Road Trip Mixtape by Brendan Leonard is amazing. I've been reading nothing but fiction for a while, so his book is a breath of fresh air - to know that this is just one man writing about his adventurous reality, albeit stemming from a major heartache.

After a breakup, Brendan decides to search for meaning of and purpose to life on a 10,000-mile, 10-week road trip, sleeping in his car, rock climbing with friends, simply finding beauty in the great outdoors. Brendan has woven an inspiring and heartfelt narrative in which we can all learn an important lesson. Like how maybe we can do without so many material possessions. Like how spending time outdoors, getting back to nature, can bring endless happiness.

What is a life? he asks throughout his story. My takeaway? Our pursuit of the American Dream starts and ends inside each of us, pursuing the things that truly make us happy, the things we're good at, the things we're passionate about. Make time to find the joy in simple things.

I'll end this review my quoting my favorite passage of the book, which, like much of the book, left me feeling goosebumps. Brendan writes:

"Is life art? ... Can I live in a way that looks like art? Can I have a love story that's as good as a fiction writer could create and go places that couldn't be more beautiful if you made them up in your head and painted them on a canvas? And can my heart pound for a few minutes a day with inspiration like I'm at a concert with 80,000 people? When you're talking to me, could our conversation make one or both of us want to change our lives for the better? Can I make you smile, laugh, stop worrying, and start dreaming, just by talking to you and being me? Is it foolish to try for that, even if sometimes I end up feeling like someone put a spike into my heart, because the sad part is art, too?"

Damn.

[skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

An email I wrote immediately upon finishing this book: "I just finished "The New American Road Trip Mixtape" (Brendan Leonard / semi-rad.com) and am planning out how and when to quit my job and live on the road for ~ a year, mostly in the West. The main question is how much money I'll need to save up first..."

Brendan's blog semi-rad.com is one of just a few blogs I subscribe to - he has a great human vision of mountain experience, and his pieces about family and friends are as powerful as his pieces about epic climbs etc (or semi-epic as the case may be).

I've enjoyed hearing his stories on the blog and in the Dirtbag Diaries podcast, so it was great to tie them together with more of his backstory in this book, and then a slideshow he gave in Seattle recently on tour.

This book is a collection of anecdotes, really all about the new American family. Brendan was just out of a bad breakup and travels to see friends all over the West. He writes about their relationships, families, and sees and shows a great diversity of how people are living with other people in family and community nowadays.

I'm looking forward to his next book.

[Molly Bazilchuk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Self-indulgent, long-winded and pointless. The story can be summarized as follows: Girl breaks up with boy. Boy moves into van and drives around crying and thinking about girl. Boy wants to be Jack Kerouac and so quotes him a lot instead of creating original content. Repeat for 200 + pages.

There were some funny moments; Brendan Leonard writes some really hilarious and occasionally thought-provoking stuff on his website Semi-rad.com. Unfortunately this book left me thinking: so what? Why should I care?

[Sharlea Taft · Rating 4 out of 5]

Road tripping wanderlust

I read this book because I have been a fan on semi-rad.com for a while. I thought the book would just be about travel, climbing and a little adventure. It was a quick read and I ended up not minding the broken heart tales along the way. I wonder if Tess likes the book? I recommend it for a fun read but wouldn't have been disappointed if there was less Tess.

[Zane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author writes as if nobody is reading. As I read it feels like the entire book is the author talking/thinking to himself, his inner monologue. Not content meant to be consumed by others. He's open, emotional and contemplative such that it couldn't be anything but 100% the truth. He challenges himself and reflects on his past, his present and his future in a way that the entire time I felt as if I had a perfectly clear and honest view into his mind.

[Amanda Swinehart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good not great. Part road trip analysis, part relationship analysis the story didn't really make any new revelations on either topic. I spent most of the 200+ pages annoyed at the over usage of commas and under usage of quotation marks. It was a quick, fairly entertaining read though.

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love a good road trip, so when my son had to buy this for his freshman seminar class, I was excited to read it too. There’s a lot to like about this book — cool places and the siren call of the open road. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve been on a big road trip and we’re overdue for another one. In these pandemic days of remote working and empty nesting, there’s a part of me that says “just do it,” and this book is inspirational in that regard.

But. The author is, by his own account, a lost man searching for meaning and a great deal of the book describes his existential angst over the meaning of life and whether he should be partnered or a parent. I am no longer 32, and am both married and a parent (and was both in fact, at age 32.) His perspective is not mine, nor has it ever been. Where he sees home or permanent roots as a stifling albatross and is surprised when people are happy in it, I am that happy person who loves home — and yet still loves the adventures of aimless travel. The author hasn’t yet matured into the viewpoint that there is no direct path to happiness, and that in fact, it comes from within. We’re all on a journey at our own pace, so I don’t want to disparage him on his, but his adolescent navel-gazing, and wildly specific list of qualities a partner must have (a pedestal which no human would comfortably sit) demonstrate , painfully obviously, how far he has to grow. I was hoping by the end of the book, for more character growth than I saw. It felt like the beginning, rather than the end, and I was sincerely hoping for an epilogue that helped us see the author’s growth over time.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got more than a third of the way through this book and finally put it down. I was disappointed, because I was excited about it -- excited enough to buy a copy because, naturally, the library doesn't typically carry self-published authors. I was inspired by the fact that this author actually brought copies of his book into multiple Barnes & Noble stores and stuck them on shelves for shoppers to grab, even if they weren't technically Barnes & Noble inventory.

...but this book missed the mark for me. I was expecting a true road trip story (I'm currently in the process of writing one, myself) with dialogue, touching moments in each city, new characters introduced in a way that makes the reader care...none of that happened. This book is about the author's quest to heal from a break-up at a time in his life when he feels he should be married, so he packs up all of his climbing gear and goes and scales a bunch of mountains in the American west.

There is very little dialogue (save for inner dialogue), no plot, no story development, no character development. I actually hope that the author reads this review so he can understand more fully why agents won't represent his work. He has the potential to be a good writer, but this book just had very little commercial potential, and most people don't care about rock climbing. They want to read about all the little moments in which a person finds themselves on a road trip, and how that process was transformative.

2 stars for the decent writing.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been a reader of his blog for many years, and I've read Sixty Meters to Anywhere. Hell I've even seen him speak about that book.

That said, this book is just not good.

Leonard does himself a great disservice by referencing Kerouac and Steinbeck incessantly. He has to know that he is not adding to the canon of the Great American Novel. His writing reads more like a journal that I have written: a description of mild adventures and visits to friends with overtones of relationship trouble.

He also does this funny thing where he tries to simultaneously hold that his adventures are Serious and Awesome, but also Not Impressive nor Technically Arduous. I've done many of the rock climbs and mountaineering routes he talks about, and I'm not very talented. I've also gone through some breakups. To center a book around Adventure and Relationships, one would hope that he has unique experiences or unique insight into either. Unfortunately, he doesn't. There is literally nothing new in terms of stories told or analysis of relationships, identity, adventure, or risk. There are hard questions posed, but he lets them sit against a backdrop of failed relationships and relatively minor adventures. He doesn't do the hard work to connect them or weave them together.

I'm still a fan of him, and I'll continue reading his humorous work, including his blog and articles, but Brendan Leonard does not shine in longform.

[Tommy Beiter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s my notes I jotted down during reading:

Repeating in multiple chapters of him doing math how long he has to have kids—if he wants them.

The chapter after he tells us about his dui he admits to having ice cream and beer as a weekly ritual at the mobil in Yosemite. Reliable narrator?

Frantically scattered thoughts of a man on a road trip that I’m not sure is even a road trip

I loved the misquoted Superbad reference by Chris and Derek

“Is there such thing as a comfortable bed, or are we just at peace enough to fall asleep?”
Come on man. I know this is about getting rid of stuff, finding out what you really need. Sure you don’t NEED a bed, but is a bed comfortable? Come on. Mattress or dirt and rocks? Sure you can fall asleep on the ground but it sure as fuck isn’t comfortably

This book was not great, but also great? I feel like his writing improved towards the end, there was a better message, and he stopped repeating himself.

[Christine Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great 21st century meditation on road trips--their history, purpose, and evolution as well as a personal memoir filled with insights that are both significant to the writer and widely applicable to many readers. Leonard is an avid outdoorsman and so the road trip is punctuated with existential questions about what constitutes a good life while he explores some of America's natural treasures around the West. Reflective and thoughtful, Leonard compares his trip regularly to a few literary precursors--Jack Kerouc, William Least Heat Moon and John Steinbeck with both humor and astute observation.

[FZA · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like travelogues and I like nature writing. I was hoping this book would be a bit of both. Instead it's pointless meanderings from a narrative voice that thinks he's a lot more insightful than he actually is.

Early in the book, Leonard spends nearly a full page internally debating how much time his friend's wife has before she is too old to have kids. This is both none of his business and tremendously boring. And that just about sets the tone of the rest of the book as well: pointless or boring or both.

[Angel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Redundant, meandering, boring, humorless. That being said, I think this book could've used the heavy hand of a sharp editor, which might have made it readable. I don't know. I'd be curious to see what his prose is like in 30 years, after a lifetime of experiences. Maybe he'll go backpacking through the Himalayas some day. Then he'll have something a little more exciting to write about other than whining about his women woes.

[Alison Rockrohr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reads like a journal. It is a double-spaced, enjoyable read that makes you think about the questions asked throughout the book. The main question being, “What is a life?”. It is self-published, and I found everything about it to be raw and, at times, inspiring. It is influenced by many great works before, but is a relaxing book to ponder over and reflect back on your own hard moments in life.

[Chris Robison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to rate this a 3 because it wasn’t as fun or exciting as I was expecting but I found I couldn’t put it down when I read it and I really enjoy Brendan’s writing. I found it fairly relatable to my life currently. It already inspired me to try new things and I’m looking forward to my own mini road trips to get out on soon.

[kyle Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!

Brendan did what all of us dream of doing and he did it well. Loved all the relationships he formed and places he went. Glad I finished so I can now go on a drive into the mountains.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how Brendans writing reads so easily, almost like you are just listening to a friend talk. I really appreciated the musings about “what is a life?”, really resonated with where I’m at in my own life.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend loaned this to me and I really enjoyed it. This book chronicles a period of searching after a breakup. I loved hearing about the places in the American West that I hold close to my heart also those that I have yet to visit.

[David Conway · Rating 4 out of 5]

The American myth of the open road lives on!

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be about climbing and road tripping, but it was mostly about how he misses his ex-girlfriend.

[Hayes McKibben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, awe-inspiring, book about the reason we travel.