Packing Books

I am so looking forward to vacation and doing a bit of travelling. I find that there is hardly any fretting these days about what book or books to bring, since the e-book reader came along, particularly the Kindle, with which I can restock without even using the computer - in case I only brought boring books or finish them faster than anticipated. To me, who is a bit of a minimalist flashpacker (the drawing is pretty accurate), not having to lug around heavy and space-eating volumes is wonderful.

Earlier years I haven´t read as much in hotels as I thought I would, since I have been fiddling much with the photos taken during the day. This year, however, I am only shooting in RAW (because once you get the hang of it, you can´t go back), and the travel computer doesn´t have the software to deal with that format (only for backing up the files), so I will have to wait to see or do anything with photos until I get home. Which to me sounds like: more reading time. Not a bad thing, then. Excellent, in fact!

I have stocked up with Stephen King, as Priya has been going on so much about his greatness and has made me really curious about "The Shining" and "Dr Sleep". I haven´t read King since the 80´s, "Cujo" I think it was, and can remember very little about it. Also, I have short stories by Alice Munro that I meant to read this earlier this year, but didn´t get to for some reason. It was my resolution this year to read one Munro a week, but that didn´t work out at all (isn´t that the fate of most new years resolutions?). And, I have the first volume of "The Complete Short Stories" by J G Ballard. That should be enough for a few weeks. Oh yeah, there are the two last novels of Nancy Mitford as well.

(I just went to fetch the link to Priya´s blog and was reminded of Stephen Booth´s "Black dog", so I got that one, too...)

We are doing some book related things during this trip, like visiting Birmingham with the sole purpose of seeing their new library, as I decided to do when I was there in 2009. I am really happy to return there. Hope you all have a good summer - with lots of reading time.