First there’s the matter of upping the ante. Reading should always be pleasurable. But reading on vacation should–one supposes–be doubly pleasurable. After all, one is on vacation. No one’s looking to read the Baltimore Catechism while reclining on a beach blanket. Except the Great Santini, who, so far as I know, is the only individual, fictional or flesh, who has proclaimed it as his favorite book. Then again Bull Meecham wasn’t much for vacations, either.
Then there’s the matter of which kind of pleasure one seeks via vacation reading. Is it the pleasure of finally dipping into Proust, or the pleasure of guiltlessly indulging in skankier fare? I suspect that authors in both camps would be insulted by the inference that their work was best fit for poolside reading (viz., my not linking to books representing either camp). Then again, since when do we readers care what authors think? Merci, Roland Barthe.
Having come to some tenuous understanding about which types of books we’ll take with us, we must begin to select–well, we must select which types of books we’ll take with us. Hardcover or soft? Mass market or trade? New cloth or weathered Modern Library? Thick or thin? Here we are in the realm of dealing with books as objects, as my colleague Kirsten Reach so articulately observes, which inevitably leads to making them part of our experience. And experience can be inconveniently messy. Different objects have different thresholds for sand, water, sunscreen, umbrella’d beverages.
And how should vacation reading best be packed? The days of confidently stowing a small library into checked baggage are long gone; today the airlines will bill your credit card a surcharge tantamount to two or three new books. But you can’t cram every book into your “personal item” baggage, either, because said baggage will swell beyond all reasonable convenience. Want to circumvent this trouble with an e-reader? Not while they cost more than the plane ticket itself, thank you very much. Most of us try not to lose or damage anything that expensive. At least not on vacation.
And of course comes the actual reading. But how much time does one usually have to read on vacation anyway? We all seem to believe that vacations offer great amounts of reading time, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s a comfort myth like “fat-free yogurt” or “retirement.” Concepts for suckers, in other words.
It’s all very stressing. I’m going to take some time off to think about this. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.