M——l asked me a really great question in the comments today:
“I know you primarily as a reader (so much so that I have you labeled “Emily Reader” in my feed to avoid confusion with the Emily who likes knitting), and I’d be interested in hearing your book plans for the trip. Are you bringing a book with you? Will you pick them up and discard them along the way? Have you gone digital?”
I spent a LOT of time thinking about this before I left. So this post will attempt to answer that question, probably in way more detail than required! (I am still jetlagged and am awake way too early on the west coast.)
First of all, I needed to solve two book packing problems: guidebooks, and books to read for pleasure. I knew right off the bat I’d have to go digital with the guidebooks I’m bringing, as there’s no way I could pack 16 countries worth of guidebooks without developing back problems during the trip.
I don’t have – nor do I ever plan to buy – an eReader, so any digital books have to be read on my Macbook Air. I tested out both the Kindle app for Mac and the iBooks reader, and I liked the iBooks reader best. This was especially true for guidebooks – regular books display very similarly in both apps, but guidebooks look and flow much better in iBooks. So I selected and purchased the guidebooks I wanted and downloaded them to both my laptop and my iPhone. (I won’t read regular books on my iPhone, but having the guidebooks downloaded there seemed smart.) I chose the same travel guide brands I usually buy in print, Rick Steves and Lonely Planet. (The other series I love, DK Eyewitness, is not available digitally.)
Then we have reading for pleasure. Most people who know me know that I have a great dislike of eReaders/reading digitally. I dug up this old blog post I wrote in 2009 that explains why I don’t like digital books, and laughed when I saw the part where I stated that I don’t travel that much. My traveling circumstances have changed, but my feelings about reading digitally have not. I especially love having time in my day when I am not staring at a screen. But I’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices for this trip, and being willing to read digitally sometimes is one of them. I plan to try a dual strategy of carrying 1 or 2 lightweight paperbacks that I can read and then leave behind / swap for new ones, and reading digitally. (Also, I have a lot of audiobooks downloaded to my iPhone. I love audiobooks, and may end up listening vs reading a lot while traveling as well.)
The first three print books I have with me are:
-The Silent Traveller in London by Chiang Lee (finished on the flight to SFO, will be leaving here)
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac
-Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
I’ve already read On the Road and Nine Stories (I’ve actually read Nine Stories 3 times), but starting out the journey by re-reading some old favorites seemed comforting. I got cheap (50 cents) second hand copies so I don’t have to abandon my copies, which are marked up with my favorite passages.
For digital books, I started out by downloading a bunch of free classics. I don’t normally enjoy reading classics while traveling, but they were free. And some of them are very well matched to my journey, such as:
-Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
-Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
-Walden by Henry David Thoreau
-The Road by Jack London
-Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
-Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Then I bought and downloaded some books that I would like to read while traveling, including:
-The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau
-To the Ends of the Earth by Paul Theroux
-Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr
-Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya
-Paris, Paris by David Downie
-Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
Adding to all this book packing stress is the fact that buying and downloading books and media from my US based iTunes account is only available while I’m physically located in the US. So I’ve had to think about four months of books in advance, and it’s hard to predict what I’ll need or want. I’m not sure what I’m having for breakfast today, so I’m definitely not sure what I’ll want to read while on a boat on the Mekong river in 6 weeks. (There are ways to solve this fairly easily though, such as a VPN service like Hide My Ass. Has anyone ever used one of these? I’d love more info!)
And finally, since this is a bookish blog, and I am a very bookish person, you will see a strong reading/literature presence in my posts from the road. I plan on visiting many libraries and bookstores and sharing the experience and photos. I’ll be reading poetry from the regions I’m visiting. And I’ve picked out several books to match the places I’ll be visiting, such as:
-In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (I just started re-reading this via audiobook to prepare for Australia)
-A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen to read in Norway
-The Ice Balloon by Alec Wilkinson for the Arctic
For anyone who wants to match books to travel plans, or just armchair travel, I highly recommend Book Lust To Go by Nancy Pearl.
I am not usually a big ebook reader but I only brought one print book with me on my month-long trip to Europe and read 7 or 8 on my iPad. I’ve since bought a nook and I use that almost exclusively when I travel. It’s hard to argue with something that barely weighs anything and holds thousands of books. :)
It sounds like you’ve got it all planned out. Although I’m strongly against digital books in my own life, I think it makes sense to add them into the mix during such a long trip. I especially like the idea of digital travel guides. That never would’ve occurred to me. It’s too bad the Eyewitness guides aren’t available…those were always my favorites.
I love my Paperwhite BUT in the prevailing spirit of the day I will tell you something bad about eReaders: I tend to finish fewer books. It’s just too easy to hop from book to book, too easy to download yet another one or six. When you carry only one print title with you, you are probably going to finish it.