Harmony ,'First Date'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Pick one, Calli! Reading while traveling lacks that perfect, happy immersion into another world, I have found, so pick the one that you think that will happen with! And enjoy! Wrap up in something soft, drink/eat something yummy and enjoy!
Why deny a simple pleasure?
GO TEAM READING HEDONISM!
Oh, and then? Choose a favorite book, a comfort read, something that will take your senses back to the place and time you read it, and buy a used copy to take on the trip.
I read Woman on the Edge of Time at the lake one summer. It was a mind-expanding book for me, and I've reread it more than once. Each time I'm reading about future worlds, and I feel surrounded again by the green-gold gloom of sunlight through the trees, the whisper of leaves in the light wind, the creak of the hammock, the rise and fall murmur as boats tootle past, the slap of wake against the shoreline, and the quabbling of the kids as they paddle in the shallows. That book is forever intertwined with where I was when I first read it.
If you have books that are anchored in place and time like that for you, and you enjoyed the book, choose one of those to replace the new one you read today. You may need a brief comforting anchor when you're far away in unfamiliar surroundings.
I often choose a book to reread and then realize it wasn't the book but the memory I wanted to savor. Works, either way.
I adore my enabling Buffistae.
Hmmmmm. Now to chose my comfort read . . .
Each time I'm reading about future worlds, and I feel surrounded again by the green-gold gloom of sunlight through the trees, the whisper of leaves in the light wind, the creak of the hammock, the rise and fall murmur as boats tootle past, the slap of wake against the shoreline, and the quabbling of the kids as they paddle in the shallows.
Lovely!
Calli, you can always buy more books for vacation.
Over the weekend, in one brief conversation, my mother spoiled the big surprise endings (or at least major plot points) of TWO books I will probably read! NOT ON, MOM. She was like, Oh, you'll forget by the time you read them. NO I WILL NOT.
You won't! You'll forget, but then the minute you actually start reading the book, it will click and you'll remember and BOOOOOO.
Onion A.V. Club reviews George Plimpton's biography.
Which is in itself cool, but then in the comments section there evolves a series of blue blooded porn bits with ascots and monocles that's engaging reading.
Plimpton comes off as such a delightful creature that not even the unsavory revelation that the Paris Review perennial attended numerous orgies in the seventies can sully his air of boyish enthusiasm and almost oppressive geniality that surrounds him even in death.
That blew my mind and caused my monocle to shatter into a million little pieces. Can you even imagine what it would be like to attend an orgy in the disco era and have George Motherfucking Plimpton walk through the door? That would freak me the fuck out. I would find it hard to concentrate on the task at hand because I’d spend the entire time thinking, “Holy shit! That’s George Plimpton over there wacking away at some fetching lass with his joint.” I suspect that if someone of Plimpton’s stature were to frequent orgies today blurry footage of their sexcapades would pop up on the internet within the hour.
I love George Plimpton so much! Actually, I had a letter to the editor of Vanity Fair printed after an error in a profile of him a few years ago. And by "I had," I mean I wrote the letter and sent it over my boss's name.
Allende's Paula is inextricably linked to riding on a bus through the Slovakian hinterlands. Even though it has no resemblance at all to the surroundings I was in.
Does everybody know about the Horror Masters site?
It's a huge archive of public domain horror, pulp and fantasy stories in a very readable .pdf format.
So if, for example, you get the urge to read "The Yellow Wallpaper" or "The Monkey's Paw" or even whole novels like Wm. Beckford's Vathek it's there for you. They've got 2,866 titles. Novels, short stories and poetry. Hawthorne, Machen, ETA Hoffman, Stoker, Shelley, Wilkie Collins... All on the dark side, all free.