Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Books That Should Be In A Beach Bag

This meme is hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. To see more suggestions for holiday reads, please visit the hosting site and from there you can go to any or all of the other participating blogs.

I do not sunbathe and therefore I present Top Ten Books that should be in my carry-on bag (or on my e-reader when I get one) to ensure enjoyment and variety on a long flight or an even longer bus or train ride. Also useful, in combination with an mp3 player, when you want to be left alone for any reason:

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. My all-time first choice for a travelling book. I know it so well that I can open it at random and begin reading on any page, yet I never grow tired of it. I am on my second copy, having read the first one to tatters. Alternative: Any of Pratchett's Discworld books.
A travelogue of the place I am visiting. Preferably historical so I can make comparisons and annoy my co-tourists with useless trivia.
One Georgette Heyer novel, because sometimes it’s just nice to escape into a whole different time and place. Also because I like to spread the Heyer gospel.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, as an antidote to the strains of modern travel. Alternative: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.
A book of short stories, journalism or essays. Because it’s nice to have something that can be read in short instalments.
The latest romance novel from Nora Roberts.The perfect escapism.
A juicy piece of popular science. Stiff might not be the best book to read on a plane, lest you scare your seat-mates with the cover, but The Secret Life of Lobsters or Orchid Fever could be interesting conversation starters.
One classic I haven’t read before. Preferably one under 350 pages long. I know a guy who took The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with him on holiday, with disastrous results. I have no intention of repeating his mistake.
One serious piece of non-fiction or literary fiction to be ignored in favour of the more frivolous books on the list. Afterwards I can always say “I tried, I really did!”
And last, but not least: My travel journal, because, in the immortal words of Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog