The bulk of our driving time to Yosemite was spent along US 395. And although north of Ridgecrest the scenery starts to improve, it IS still 5 1/2 hours of car time. One way. H came home with the great idea that we download Tina Fey's newest book, Bossypants, to listen to. Unable to find it quickly 1) for download 2) for less than some large sum of money 3) at the library, I scanned what actually WAS available at the library and came home with The Lost City of Z by David Grann on a mere 8 CDs. Deadly Obsession in the Amazon? I'm in! 
After about 3 CDs, I asked H if he thought we'd EVER get to the Amazon, and although we were tempted to skip ahead, we listened to the whole thing (being a captive audience and all). The author has thoroughly researched the (many) expeditions of Col. Percy Fawcett (lots of maggots and anacondas) through the jungles, and I felt as though he didn't need to include every single detail he discovered.
The part of the book that put me off the most was the parallel story of the author's own journey to trace Fawcett's disappearance (I don't think that's a spoiler - we know going in that Fawcett never returned from his final trip.) Grann's recounting of his own research is a yawner, and the most interesting part of the whole book is tacked on in the last chapter - what exactly we now know about the ancient civilizations in the Amazon (El Dorado/The City of Z).
While not in the car, I had time to finish up another yawner of a book - Kindred by Octavia Butler. Butler was a black woman science fiction writer with numerous awards, and I had been wanting to read something of hers for a few years now. Let's just say that in this book, time travel is merely a device to move characters around, and it is unclear as to the reason for the time travel. That is, I wouldn't call this science fiction, but more of a historical fiction with bland prose and mostly undeveloped characters.
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