Packing Books

At Publishing Perspectives, Erin Cox talks about packing books for a summer vacation. Like Erin, I cultivate my stack of books “like some people cultivate gardens.” Her post started me thinking about my own book-packing habits. Most of my trips these days are work-related, rather than a summer vacation, so I need to pack fewer books than Erin (her list includes 14 titles). Nonetheless, I carefully consider (and reconsider) the books I pack for days before the trip. Here’s my general formula:

• A collection of short stories (or a recent issue of Bookforum, or a handful of back issues of One Story) for filling short gaps of time
• One completely mesmerizing, but fairly uncomplicated, novel to take my mind off bad patches of turbulence, rude cabdrivers, and noisy restaurants
• One challenging and thought-provoking book. This could be experimental fiction, poetry, a collection of essays or something similarly demanding. Such books are great for those solitary, uninterrupted evenings spent in hotel rooms.
• Something funny to counteract long days filled with meetings
• Something related to my destination, whether it’s a travel memoir, a collection of essays, or fiction
• An audiobook (or a collection of the latest episodes of my favorite book podcasts) to liven up workouts in gloomy hotel fitness centers

I don’t often satisfy every piece of this “formula,” but I always end up with a good mix of reading material for my trips. For example, for this week’s trip to Anchorage, Alaska, I’ve brought along:

• Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr.
• Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
• Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
• Boy by James Hanley
• Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris (an audiobook)
• The latest three issues of One Story