04 March, 2008

The travel/book dilemma


My biggest, most common packing error is "Ack! I brought too many books!"

So what to do about an 8-month trip, the first five months of which will be in a non-English-speaking country? I was planning to read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but yesterday I discovered that it's not 3 hefty mass market paperbacks like I thought, but seven, SEVEN regular sized mass markets or 3 HUEG 1000-page trades. So basically three hardcovers, in weight and size.

Maybe I won't carry that around in my backpack.

The only other good option I can think of is to bring Middlemarch or some Dickens and plan on reading at the pace of a snail, but considering the amount of airplane and train time I'm likely to have, that sounds like a sad prospect indeed.

Any travel reading suggestions?