Geek Much? Books & Travel

I love almost everything about traveling. I really the only things I can think of that I don’t love about traveling is diarrhea and getting robbed. One thing that I always forget that I love about traveling is all of the reading I do. During my real life I don’t spend my spare time reading books. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is that I am doing besides reading, but somehow I never get past chapter 3 if I am at home. But when I travel I read avidly. The uninterrupted airplane reading time really gets me into the book. It also helps that when I’m on vacation I don’t spend my extra minutes folding laundry or watching TV, I get the appropriate beverage and seating arrangement (be it a coco batido and a hammock, camping chair and hot chocolate, or a whiskey with a beer back and a bar table) and I read. There are several things about reading on vacation that make it more pleasurable than real life reading for me. For on thing I am anonymous. None of these doctor that I am trying to get letters of recommendation from, or people I keep happening to run into that I went to high school with are around to judge my intelligence by my literature choice. For example on our last trip to Peru I shamelessly read Twilight and giggled through the whole book in various airports along the way, and on the way home I unabashedly asked every bookstore we came across where I could find a copy of Nueva Luna in English. As a side note, I suppose I do care what you think I read so for the record I also read Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

Finally, I always think that reading on vacations, even adventure travel vacations, is interesting because EVERYBODY does it! On my last flight to LA the guy I was sitting next to engaged in conversation with the girl across the isle because she was reading the self help book he had just finished. Gag! But also kind of a good way to meet somebody I guess. Along the same lines as spying on people to see what they are reading on the plane, I always love looking at the book exchange shelves in the cheap hostels that I frequent when traveling. I find it fascinating to see what people have thought merited a portion of their limited backpack space.