But it got me wondering: What makes a good holiday read? Is it a novel set in the city you’re in that provides a chill of recognition every time you stumble across a corner or plaza where some plot point occurs? Is it a nonfiction book about that place that helps you understand its history, culture, or architecture? Is it a biography of someone closely associated with that city?
Or is it something else entirely: an unrelated palate cleanser chosen to help reset the mind after a hectic day of sightseeing? A vacation is supposed to be an escape. Would your escape benefit from escapist literature?
For me, choosing the right books to take on vacation is almost as much fun as the vacation itself. I don’t always get it right. I managed to finish the first-person account of a survivor of the Uruguayan rugby team who crashed in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism, but it was a poor choice for a beach house on the Outer Banks. Somehow, though, “Moby Dick” was perfect for a rainy weekend in Chincoteague in the 1980s with my then-girlfriend. Would the relationship survive being trapped in a small condo, each of us in our own corners, in our own heads? (Reader, I married her).
Reading has the magical ability to transport us. Your body is in one place, your mind in another. The environment of a book may be more important than the physical environment of the person reading it; I’d rather read a good book in a bad environment than a bad book in a good environment, but that doesn’t mean the two aren’t related. . Just as the right wine can enhance a meal, the right setting can enhance a book, and vice versa.
Every once in a while, it all comes together: reading’s version of the Aristotelian unity of time, place, and action. And it’s not just during the holidays. Sometimes I like to read in the bathtub, where I can bask in the amniotic suds, drying my fingers on a towel to turn the pages. i loved to read by Jasper Fforde “Early Riser”, a fantasy novel about a world dominated by an ice age, where most humans hibernate for the winter, while steam rose from the bathtub and frost painted the window glass.
I knew that Tana’s French paperback wouldn’t last me the whole vacation, and I was hoping to buy something in the country, so to speak, if I could find a Portuguese bookstore that sold books in English. In Porto we visit Lello Bookstore, which has been called the most beautiful bookstore in the world. It’s an art nouveau masterpiece, a jewel box of carved woodwork, stained glass windows, and a curved staircase painted crimson. Being inside the store made me want to drink absinthe.
Livrario Lello has become such a must-see that a line forms at the door and a timed-entry ticket (5 euros, valid for any purchase) is needed just to enter.
The store is not organized like your typical Barnes and Noble. Neither title is embossed like the thrillers that decorate airport kiosks. Lello chooses to organize the books in unique ways, including those by authors who have won the Nobel Prize for literature, deceased authors who should they have won it, and the living who still might. There is a special section dedicated to the books of the only Portuguese Nobel laureate: Joseph Saramago (1998).
To be honest, I didn’t know anything about the guy. But I thought: when I was in Rome… I picked up a paperback copy of “Blindness” and started reading: “The amber light came on. Two of the cars accelerated before the red light appeared. At the crosswalk a green man’s sign lit up.”
Saramago never says where this city street is, in which country the events of the novel take place, but now that I had been to Portugal (it was still there!), I could imagine it in Portugal, just around the corner from my hotel , near the tram stop, next to the bakery…
“Yeah,” I thought, taking the book to the cashier, “this will work pretty well.”
How do you decide which books to take on vacation? Have you had a particularly great experience with your choice, or a lousy one? Send me the details, with “Reading Material” in the subject line, at [email protected].