In June 1981, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Chicago and road it into the evening and the next day, bound for a job interview at the Waco Tribune Herald. School was almost over, so most of my reading was for pleasure, a lovely thing after four years of college. I read Love's Lovely Counterfeit, The Awakening* (that might have been for a course, actually, but it was pure pleasure) and began One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I got off the bus in Waco, checked into a very scary downtown hotel. Got up the next morning, went on my round of interviews, was offered a job**, said I wanted to think about it, called my mother collect from the bus station and got back on the bus. At some point, a young soldier snapped a Polaroid of me asleep. I wore a madras skirt, a white Oxford cloth shirt and a blue blazer. One Hundred Years of Solitude is on the seat next to me. At least, I think it is; I don't think I still own this Polaroid. How I wish I did.

Motion sickness kicked in at some point and it would be several years before I finished this wonderful book. Whenever I picked it up -- to this day, if I pick it up -- I smell Starbursts and bus fuel and think about the soldier and the nice older lady who insisted I get off the bus and go look at the arch in St. Louis.

Specific reading memories, with or without scents?

*I was very proud when The Awakening made its way into Treme, although full credit goes to Davis Rogan, who was the first to suggest it IIRC. I just vouched for it as a choice.
**I took the job. Certain details of life in Texas can be found in the story I wrote for The Mystery Book, "Waco 1982." I also used one tiny snippet of this journey for What the Dead Know: Jane Doe's arrival, in 1981, at the Chicago bus station on an unseasonably cool day when the shuttle astronauts have just been honored with a ticker-tape parade.