Booking Through Thursday: Travel

It's been a while since I've done Booking Through Thursday but this topic is dear to my heart:

When you travel, how many books do you bring with you?  Has this changed since the arrival of ebooks?

I can dispense with the ebook question right away:  we are still a paper and ink family.  I don't know that it will always be that way.  An ebook reader would make travel easier...

Because we always pack too many books.  "We" because the seminarian is the same way. That's one of the ways we knew we were made for each other:  when we are preparing for a trip, packing the right books (in the right numbers) is more important (and more difficult) than packing the right clothing.    

But I've said all this before.  I wrote this in 2005 as we were preparing to take a month-long trip to England and Scotland:

The clothing is all piled on the floor, ready to go in the suitcases... most of the housecleaning is done... laundry is under control...

Now, what should I take to read?

I think it's down to: Sense and Sensibility (Austen), Johnson and Boswell's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides With Samuel Johnson, The Heart of Homeschooling (Klicka; a freebie from joining HSLDA) and of course my Bible and new study book Becoming a Woman of Prayer. Oh, a Tabletalk magazine, too. We've been getting it for a while, though I never read it. Now's the time. Maybe.

For the readalouds with the kids: Mr. Pipes and the British Hymn Makers (Bond; a re-read but we may get to visit the real city in which the fictional story takes place), Black Beauty (Sewell), and The Enchanted Castle (Nesbit). Wanted to take Duncan's War (Bond, story of Scottish Covenanters) but there don't appear to be any girls in it, so Eleanor would object.

Of course I suppose it's possible we might find a book or two to buy while we are there.  

Our kids were 6 and 8 then, so they weren't taking their own books. The 8-year-old wasn't really a reader yet. The 6-year-old taught herself to read on that trip, after discovering that if she could read for herself, she wouldn't have to rely on me to find the castle gift shops.

Visit Booking Through Thursday for more thoughts on books and travel.

Booking Through Thursday: Giving up

I'd seen the Booking Through Thursday meme around and thought I'd try it out this week.  It's an easy question for me:


If you’re not enjoying a book, will you stop mid-way? Or do you push through to the end? What makes you decide to stop?

Oh, stop!  I often quit books if they are not holding my interest or are downright annoying me. If it's a novel, I will frequently just skip to the end, see if my predictions are correct, and move on to something new.  If it's nonfiction and a topic I am particularly interested in, I may look around in hope of finding something of value. 


There are too many books to waste time on bad ones.

Unless, of course, one is in school and the book is required.  Then you just have to trust the teacher that it is worth reading.  Or, find a teacher who doesn't assign horrid books.  I still have the (mental) scars from forcing myself through The Awakening in American Lit so many years ago.



What makes me stop?  A predictable plot where I can figure out what's going to happen too early on.  Recently I had a book from the library that I could figure out in the first chapter because there were too many clues in the blurb.  No, I'm not that clever.  It was just so obvious!   Cliched writing drives me away.  Too much bleakness, or what I call "family tragedy" books where there is just one horrible thing after another happening. 

It's a little harder to to determine with nonfiction.  If I pick up a nonfiction book it's because the topic interests me.  So, bad writing would be the killer.  Or extraneous information unnecessary to the topic.  Once I started reading a terrific history book that I hoped to pass on to one of my kids.  Then suddenly the author threw in a graphic description of sexual activity that was just gratuitous.   That was the end of that book. 



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