How many books per hour should you read on summer vacation?
It鈥檚 possible, although not easy, to hold 11 books in one hand while steering a luggage cart with the other.
Or so I learned on the first leg of my summer vacation trip last month, as I carried my suitcase and my reading material down the hall toward the hotel room.
For a trip lasting eight days, I鈥檇 brought an armful of volumes with a collective page count of 4,094. To complete all of these books while I traveled through the Smokies and into North Carolina, I would have needed to read nearly 512 pages each day.
Assuming that I could read 30 pages an hour, that would have been 17 hours of daily reading, leaving no time for the other fun things I wanted to do: tubing down North Carolina鈥檚 New River, kayaking, dining, or sitting in a deck chair and scouting the treeline for egrets.
On summer vacations, we never read as much as we think we will. But we can still dream, which is why I brought along 鈥淭hree by Annie Dillard,鈥� a trilogy of her autobiographical writings I鈥檇 gotten for Christmas, but somehow hadn鈥檛 gotten around to reading. I also packed three volumes of Phyllis Theroux鈥檚 personal writings: 鈥�California and Other States of Grace,鈥� 鈥淧eripheral Visions,鈥� and 鈥淣ight Lights.鈥� Why three Theroux books and not just one? Because I like full immersion in a writer when I travel. It can be like taking a long car trip with a good friend 鈥� or a prospective friend 鈥� the rich possibility of talk, talk, talk as the accumulation of miles takes you ever farther from home.
I included 鈥淭horeau: A Book of Quotations鈥� and the latest Princeton edition of Thoreau鈥檚 early letters because the Sage of Walden always inspires me to slow down and pay attention. That鈥檚 the kind of awareness you want on a vacation.
For the same reason, I packed Verlyn Klinkenborg鈥檚 鈥淢ore Scenes from the Rural Life,鈥� his essays about his upstate New York farm. He sees so much that you can鈥檛 help reading him and improving your vision, too.
Finally, I packed my mammoth edition of Montaigne鈥檚 essays, an advance copy of Diane Ackerman鈥檚 yet-to-be-released 鈥淭he Human Age,鈥� and a review copy of 鈥淐iao, Carpaccio,鈥� a Jan Morris title that also won鈥檛 hit stores for a while. Also, a collection of Mark Twain鈥檚 letters from Hawaii. I might be writing about Montaigne, Ackerman, Morris, and Twain soon. I thought that reading them on vacation might make me feel industrious.
Stacked atop each other, my summer vacation books made an 11-inch stack weighing 13 pounds. I鈥檓 a romantic about summer reading, but I鈥檓 not crazy. I knew that I wouldn鈥檛 read all of these books on my trip, just as I wouldn鈥檛 hike every mountain trail or navigate every turn of the New River.
But there鈥檚 comfort in knowing that these things are simply there, available if we want them, or just a portion of them, as a day unfolds. Vacations, so much about the indulgence of desire, naturally inspire us to want reading by the boatload. Wasn鈥檛 it Mae West who wisely observed that too much of a good thing can be wonderful?
I thought about West on the drive home from North Carolina, as I stopped by Asheville鈥檚 celebrated independent bookstore, Malaprop鈥檚, and picked up a copy of Wendell Berry鈥檚 鈥淚t All Turns on Affection.鈥�
That鈥檚 how my vacation reading stack, already an embarrassment of riches, reached an even dozen.
