And I’m Off!

We leave for Ireland tomorrow. I have packed nothing at this point, but our flight doesn’t leave until 11:00 pm, and I need something to do during the day. Even with leaving my packing until the last moment, I’ll still have plenty of hours with nothing much to do. I think I’ll be bored out of my mind, and probably too distracted and anxious to read.

Anyway, I think I’ve finally settled the issue of what books to bring with me. The most important thing is my Nook, on which I have almost 60 books. Most of those books are free classics from sites like Project Gutenberg, and a couple are from the library or NetGalleys. I can’t travel with just an electronic device for reading, though, because what happens if the battery runs out? So I’ll be bringing along at least one paper book. My thought is that I should bring something I don’t mind leaving behind, in order to make more room to bring books back. So I’m planning to bring a mass market copy of Laurie King’s Monstrous Regiment of Women, which will probably make good plane/airport reading.

I also bought my first book for the Nook today — bought as opposed to downloaded for free. I want to bring something nonfiction as well as all the novels I have, but in order to avoid carrying another paper book, I thought it was worthwhile to buy something. So I got Geoff Dyer’s collection of essays Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. I loved his books Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It and Out of Sheer Rage. So I think I will like this new one.

In case you’re interested in what I have on my Nook, here’s a list:

1. Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
2. Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden
3. Jane Austen, Persuasion
4. Aphra Behn, Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister
5. E.F. Benson, Miss Mapp
6. Isabella Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains
7. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charlotte’s Inheritance
8. Robert Browning, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
9. Mary Brunton, Self Control
10. John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps
11. Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Shuttle
12. Fanny Burney, Cecilia
13. Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
14. Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
15. Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary
16. Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady
17. Abraham Cowley, Cowley’s Essays
18. E.M. Delafield, Consequences
19. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
20. Arthur Conan Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
21. Maria Edgeworth, Ennui
22. George Eliot, Romola
23. Sarah Fielding, The Governess
24. E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
25. John Galt, The Annals of the Parish
26. Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth
27. Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
28. Anna Katharine Green, The Leavenworth Case
29. Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree
30. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables
31. Georgette Heyer, The Black Moth
32. Henry James, The Tragic Muse
33. Henry James, The Europeans
34. Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs
35. Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa
36. Charlotte Lennox, The Life of Harriot Stuart
37. Ada Leverson, Love at Second Sight
38. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
39. F.M. Mayor, The Third Miss Symons
40. Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children
41. Margaret Oliphant, The Rector
42. Margaret Oliphant, Salem Chapel
43. Margaret Oliphant, Phoebe Junior
44. Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest
45. Dorothy Richardson, Pointed Roofs
46. Dorothy Sayers, Whose Body
47. Dorothy Sayers, Clouds of Witness
48. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
49. Frances Sheridan, Memoirs of Miss  Sidney Bidulph
50. May Sinclair, Mary Olivier
51. William Thackeray, Barry Lyndon
52. Mrs. Humphry Ward, Lady Rose’s Daughter
53. Mary Webb, Gone to Earth
54. Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier
55. Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country
56. P.G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves
57. Charlotte Mary Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe

Plus, from the library I have Lars Iyer’s Spurious and from Netgalleys I have Monique Roffey’s White Woman on the Green Bicycle. I will not lack for reading material, as long as I remember my Nook power cord! I chose the books on my list of free classics based on what I have and haven’t read and what I own on paper. Many of the books are not the most obvious choices for a particular author, but they are the book by that author I wanted to read next.

I may post pictures here while I’m gone, but then again, I may not. So I’ll just say I’ll see you in June and possibly sooner. Take care while I’m gone!