You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm here today with Mary Morris, author most recently of Wall to Wall, from Beijing to

Berlin by rail, published recently by Doubleday.

Author as well of Nothing to Declair, Memoirs of of a woman traveling alone. Her last novel was

The Waiting Room, several collection of short stories among my favorite story, The Bus of Dreams.

Well, so you've been breezing across the entire globe, Mary Morris. Yes, Michael, I have.

Here I am in L.A.

And this book takes you from China to Berlin,

and those of us who have lost our sense of geography,

didn't think it was possible to do this. It's quite possible. In fact, it's quite easy. The Trans-Ciberian Railroad? Right. The Trans-Ciberian Railroad from Beijing to Moscow, and then you sort of pick up an extension of that and you go on to Berlin. You can actually go to London. Really? Mm-hmm. You go the whole way. That's a lot of, you know, that's a lot of motion sickness.

Yeah, well, if you're smart, you get off here and there, you know.

Now, really, in a certain sense, do you think, I think that at one time books, writers' travel notes substituted for traveling.

There were people who never did the grand tour.

Right. And the travel notebook was once a, you know, substitute adventure for the people who stayed at home. And I found that

very much the case here. You know, the book is so personal. You're traveling at the time of

Chernobyl. You're traveling at the time of Chernobyl. Right.

You're traveling unaware when the book starts that you're pregnant.

Right.

...