Do your reading habits change when you’re on vacation? Do you read more? Do you indulge in lighter, fluffier books than you usually read? Do you save up special books so you’ll be able to spend real vacation time with them? Or do you just read the same old stuff, vacation or not?
For me, the breakdown is pleasure reading vs. utilitarian.
Not that I don’t read for pleasure other times as well — but vacations are about rewards, and what’s a more delicious reward than to read for the sheer pleasure of it?
Incidentally, some of my most satisfying vacation reads were when I was younger, during family vacations.
We used to meet up with various cousins on the Outer Banks of North Carolina; we’d spend a week there sharing a rented cottage (or two!)
One year I’d just discovered Raymond Chandler — so before the trip I went to the library and borrowed copies of every single Raymond Chandler novel. I read Chandler in the car, I read Chandler in the cottage, and I read Chandler on the beach — periodically turning my book upside down to knock out the grains of sand that collected in the crease between the pages near the spine.
By the time we got back to New York State, I’d read them all.
Another year I read everything I could get my hands on by V.S. Pritchett (btw if you haven’t sampled his short stories you are missing out big time).
Pure pleasure reading, and all the moreso for being immersive.
I really ought to do it again sometime soon . .
