bookthinking

I have been preoccupied lately with deciding which books I will bring on our cross-country train expedition. While our departure on June 6th is still over a week and a half away, we've got various houseguests and a wedding inbetween and I am feeling time closing in on me a bit. I've narrowed it down to seven (see below), for the moment at least, but then I started reading The Gunslinger and am almost done so now it's down to six. And one of them is about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, and do I really want to be reading that on my summer vacation? And one of them is the second novel in Stieg Larsson's trilogy, which, while pretty entertaining are also pretty atrociously written (or maybe it's just lost in translation) and a bit dry. So I might have to reassess this pile and start all over again.

Evan gave me a pained look the other day, a humorous roll of the eyes, and said, "Emily. How long exactly do you imagine we'll be on the train, anyway?" But 72 hours is a damned long time, and for how many hundreds of miles can flat and often empty landscapes really hold one's attention, and it seems to me bringing along seven books and two (or three) knitting projects is not at all overdoing it.

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Jill and I have been discussing George R. R. Martin's infamous (or at least infamously longwinded) Song of Ice and Fire books. It's been an unexpected delight, this recent book-talking with Jill, because it's just not something we often do. I don't say this in the context of there being something lacking in our friendship -- we have known each other for nearly thirty years now and have a plethora of stories and interests and histories to join us. It's just that reading hasn't ever really been among them. I love that it is now. I love reading, and I love talking about reading, and I love Jill.

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Friend Christopher L. is apparently at Book Expo America today, about which I am insanely jealous.

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Mom and Paul arrived safely home Monday afternoon after three weeks of traveling around Japan and Borneo. We chatted for a bit later that evening and Mom mentioned that she'd brought several books on the trip but, horror of horrors (my words, not hers), she finished all of them before the trip home. Out of sheer desperation she bought a book at an airport store but then finished that half way through the flight.

I, aghast, said, "So what did you do?!?"
She, in her ever placid way, replied, "Well, I took a nap."

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Maybe, just maybe, I should draw a page from her book and relax a little bit about bringing the perfect library on our expedition via train to the western wilds. Or maybe what I really need for my birthday is a Kindle. My dear M offered me the loan of hers for this trip, but though I was grateful, I had to decline -- knowing my luck I'd probably sit on the poor thing, or drop it into the icy June waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene, or leave it behind somewhere like so much cast-off detritus. I don't think I ever really want an E-book reader -- there is something to be said, a huge something to be said, for the feel of paper between fingers, the ability to indulge in my habit of flipping through the corners of the pages as I read, that subtle book smell I love so much. Though not all books are worth owning, the experience itself of reading a book, however bad, seems so much more magical to me than reading that same book on a screen.