Citizen Reading: Getting away from it all.
01 July 2008
Mr. Citizen Reader and I are newly back from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (da UP, eh?) and a weekend wedding that was lovely. (Three little words that make all the difference at any wedding: good buffet line.) It was a very nice weekend away, primarily because we don't have kids and when we take vacations, which is not often but always appreciated, it really does seem like getting away. (No extra packing, no figuring out activities for the car, no attending children's museums or other kid-friendly events, etc.) Now, I have it on good authority that having kids is very nice, and interesting. But not traveling with them? Priceless.
Of course, coming back, even after a scant two days away, was brutal.
I was planning on being such a well-rounded little reader. I took along several novels, but ended up reading (of course) a memoir titled Hack: How I Stopped Worrying about What To Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab. Mr. Citizen Reader packed some nonfiction, but stuck with the one novel he'd packed. Evidently you can't fight city hall.
My question on trip reading is this: Do you feel more like reading about your destination before you go traveling, or when you get back home? I'm a "get back home" reader myself. I had zero interest in the UP and Wisconsin's Door County (where we also stopped), and now I'm jonesing for some good Wisconsin and Michigan history, with an emphasis on Great Lakes shipwrecks. The few times I have traveled, I've always thought I should read about the place before I go (I felt this particularly with Boston and Montreal) but I never get it done. But that's all right. I prefer to try and lose myself in happy trip memories by reading about the places afterward. Anyone else out there have a preference?