Holiday reading

Yesterday I went to the library to pick out a few books to take with us on our long weekend to Rome.

I read a lot when I'm on holiday. And I read quite fast, but I'll come onto that in a mo.

We had 2 weeks in France in the Summer, and I read 28 books. A couple of those were not of my choosing as I had run out of my own supplies and had to read 2 godawful Barbara Cartland books left in the gite. Never again.

Anyway, last night we were musing on what to do for our 3 week road trip to the USA next year - we're only allowed to take one 23kg case each, and as we're there for 3 weeks, clothes are going to be important.

On Radio 2 the other night, they were talking about e-Readers and the new one just launched by Amazon in the USA. Hubby suggested that we invest in one to satisfy my holiday reading - apparently you can store something like 1,500 books on one!

While I am a traditionalist, and I love the physical book itself (although nothing too high brow!), I can't help thinking that this is a sensible solution. Funnily enough Jen mentioned http://www.bookcrossing.com which was something we had talked about but neither of us could remember the website... so I've signed up there now.

Hubby always accuses me of not reading books properly, as I admit to skim reading. Radio 2, funnily enough, also covered speed readers (some major bookstores over here had hired a lady to speed read the new Harry Potter (47 minutes) and Dan Brown (41 minutes) so that they could have reader reviews in store when it went on sale). I don't think I'd like to read books that fast as I'd run out quickly, and my repertoire is not that vast!

Anyway, I always say the good thing about skim reading books is that when I go to read the same book again, I almost get an entirely different story as I pick up things I may have missed before.

Case in point, I recently bought Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler. I read the back, it sounded vaguely familiar, but the way it had been displayed in the store made me think it was a latest release. I was reading it and getting the odd bit of deja vu here and there. It was when we got home and I checked the bookshelf that I realised I already had it, and had already read it! (Funnily enough I had the same thing with The Mediterranean Caper - I already had a copy, but had a layover in San Jose airport and bought myself a Clive Cussler there, only to find it was the same book but published with a different title!!)

I shall still keep buying books though, as there are some authors who I collect (Patricia Cornwell, Clive Cussler, Janet Evanovich, Adriana Trigliani) - told you I wasn't highbrow!