The criteria are good - one cool thing about a lot of newer car CD players is that they can play mp3 discs. So instead of carrying around 10 CDs, I'd rip mp3s and burn a single disc. (For a car trip, you don't need resolution as high as you would for home listening.) Of course, if I were really technologically advanced, I'd have figured out a way to play my iPod through the car speakers. (I'd also own an iPod.)  

My own criteria? I try to avoid stuff that I've just recently listened to (not necessarily "sick of it" but related), and I try to avoid music that has too broad a dynamic range. In the car, there's nothing worse than music that seems all but inaudible, so you turn up the volume, then all of a sudden everything goes triple fortissimo. Classical music doesn't work well in cars. Related peeve: CDs that are mastered at radically different volumes. Of course, if you could play mp3 discs, you could also normalize the volumes of your selections before burning a disc.

Packed for tomorrow's drive to Boston, then cruising between Quincy, Arlington, Weymouth, up to North Sutton, NH, etc over the next week. And back. Lots of I-95 and I-93 goodness.  

Criteria: I can't be sick of it, it has to offer a lot of music per disc, and my wife can't hate it.  

Amy Correia, Lakeville
Brodsky Quartet, Brodsky Unlimited
Shins, Chutes Too Narrow
Go-Betweens, Bellavista Terrace: Best of the Go-Betweens
Hem, Eveningland
Crowded House, Time on Earth
Lloyd Cole, The Negatives
Feist, The Reminder
Jill Sobule, I Never Learned to Swim: 1990-2000
Alanis Morrissette, MTV Unplugged
Teenage Fanclub, Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds: A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub
James Taylor, Greatest Hits Volume 2
New Pornographers, Mass Romantic
Ken Stringfellow, Soft Commands
Kirsty MacColl, Tropical Brainstorm