I’m back!
As you may or may not know, I’m a big reader. Like, I love reading. A lot. So a big concern on any trip is how to make sure I have enough reading material. (I’ll be honest, the usual solution is “buy more books while traveling.” This is somewhat at odds with my dream, ‘downsized’ lifestyle.) Here’s a picture of what I came home with yesterday, after two weeks away:
Red stars are books I owned and brought from my personal library (still have to post pictures!) The Castlemaine Murders and The Green Mill Murder.
Green stars I bought on vacation. Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. One, and Played by the Book.
Purple are books from my local library. The Fangirl Life, What I Meant…, The Geek Feminist Revolution, Haters, Foxy, Huntress, and A Stranger Thing.
And white stars I bought from this adorable, tiny, middle-of-nowhere-literally-next-to-a-landing-strip library that reserves two back rooms for a book sale where you donate whatever you want for the books you take. (I also bought one book for Kevin, not pictured.) Grace Sees Red, Three Blind Mice, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, and Dark Tort.
Excluding the ones I already owned, because that hardly seems fair, my favorites from this trip are The Fangirl Life, A Stranger Thing, Three Blind Mice, and The Man Who Loved Books Too Much.
- The Fangirl Life is basically a self-help book for geek girls. While most of it doesn’t exactly apply to me (I think the target audience is women younger and more involved than me) there were several sections that blew my mind and I think the exercises will be useful. I’m definitely buying a copy for myself.
- A Stranger Thing is the second book in the Ever-Expanding Universe series. It’s the only series I’ve ever read that’s a) balls-to-the-wall crazy sci fi, b) features a teen girl protag, and c) oh yeah, she’s pregnant/a new mom. If the novelty factor wasn’t enough, the story is engaging.
- Three Blind Mice is the Agatha Christie story that the famous play Mousetrap is based on. I was particularly stoked to find this because, not only am I wildly curious about how Mousetrap ends, but the first Agatha Christie I read (And Then There Were None) absolutely grabbed me by the throat. I’m so used to classics being soft, pillowy type reads that a book that’s about one hundred years old leaving me hanging so I had to stay up all night to find out what happened was an exciting experience that I’m hoping to duplicate.
- The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is nonfiction. It’s about a rare book thief. The author actually got in touch with him and followed him around, as well as interviewed the rare book dealer that organized his capture (the first time). While I definitely was more interested in the dealer than the thief, I basically absorbed the entire book between meals. I also wondered briefly if I could get a rare book to add to my library (the dealers make it sound so simple!) but immediately got rebuffed by things like “my complete lack of money.” Nonfiction isn’t my usual genre, but with a title like that, how could I resist?
How do you ensure you’ve got enough to read on vacation? Do you step outside your regular genre?
P.S. My writing suffered immensely while I traveled. Don’t ask about word counts. >.<
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