Getting ready to head south

Yesterday afterschool I found myself in a typical pre-travel venue: a bookstore. Leaving in just three days for Peru inspired me to prepare my reading materials. When I encourage students to bring books, not just electronics, on the trip I speak from experience. The cure for long lines and periods of boredom (yes those do happen) has always been a book for me. I look eagerly forward to taking the bus to work because it allows me uninterrupted time to read; I volunteer to take family members to the Department of Motor Vehicles because bringing a book elevates the experience to something akin to reading in the British Library.

What to bring? The right books for me are those I can bring, that can keep me interested, and which I can give away when I am done. Yes, give away! Books in the ancient "paper" form are heavy things, and nothing feels more like wasted traveler space than large chunks of already-read materials. A delicate balance must be struck.

In my tortured logic, I need a good page-turner that will not require my sense of goodwill to give the writer a chance - it needs to get started right away with something like excitement. I have found that literary classics are good for the travelers soul, but I never read them on planes. At home, yes; in the airport, no. So, no Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy. It will have to be a thriller or a mystery. Next I must find one that has a high word-to-page ratio. I quickly dispense with any 300-page book in which the pages can be read in under two or three minutes. Dense conglomerations of words make for luxuriously long books. Yesterday, I decided against a book because there was enough space between the lines for annotations. I do not want to buy blank space in a book!

Now it gets tricky. Thrillers and mystery novels typically have lurid images on the front covers. These do not convey the seriousness with which I see reading. I have memories to aid me here: many years ago I read an excellent science fiction novel for days on the Metro. Unfortunately, the image of a militant elephant wielding a machine gun through the red desert that was displayed prominently on the cover, led to all sorts of odd expressions from fellow riders. I almost had to announce that there had been some incredible mix-up at the book factory, in which the covers from two books had been switched and the mistake never caught. I obviously still recoil from the humiliation.

Finally, I have to get a book that I can pitch (or give). I read fast so I need a lot of books. These add up. When I am done, I want to be able to get rid of the book with no misgivings. The right book is one that will take some time to read, will not make me feel ripped off by the back cover, and that I can gently put on the bedside in the hotel when I leave so that a Peruvian room cleaner might pick up the book and decide that she, too, is interested in galactic war between animals and that her English is sufficiently advanced that this kind visitor has given her the appropriate gift. Win-win for all involved.

Inevitably, I am sure to find myself in a small, Peruvian-government-run bookstore of the type we used to have a lot of here in Washington, where I will be enticed to purchase a never-to-be-read treatise on the local educational practices of various provinces. This book will be hauled home, taking up all the space I was saving for souvenirs by throwing away books. Once unpacked here in DC I will ruefully note that I probably should have saved some space for purchases for other people in my family besides myself. How many books on local governments can someone really have?

And those local government books have a lot of empty space in them for annotations.

See you at the airport!