You CAN take it with you.

I'm going on a cruise next month, and will also be spending a few days in Orlando before and after the cruise itself. All told, I'll be gone for twelve days. My main packing fear isn't that I'll run out of clean underwear, or that I'll be over/under-dressed for any given event. It's that I'll run out of reading material. You may laugh, but there are few things more miserable for me than being stuck on a flight and having to twiddle my thumbs, or lie sleepless in bed with nothing to read.

So! I am taking four books with me on the trip. I can hear my parents (well, one of them for sure) groaning from here. I can easily finish one book on the way to Orlando, and another book on the way back to Portland, so that leaves two books for 10 days of vacation. Even if I only read for a little while before bed, or for half an hour at a time on our stateroom balcony, I think those two books should safely see me through the trip. Worst comes to worst, I can always buy more books! (cue another groan from a parental direction)

Here's what I'm taking:



The Singing Sands, by Josephine Tey. I read her The Daughter of Time, one of my all-time favorite books, for the first time five years ago, yet for some inexplicable reason it has taken me this long to buy another of her books. I actually made the split-second decision to get it yesterday, when researching the lost city of Ubar. Apparently this book centers around my beloved Inspector Alan Grant as he stumbles across a poem referencing this mythical city. I'm pretty excited! I got a used copy in excellent condition from Powells for little more than a song, and it'll probably be the first of these four books that I'll read.



The Art of Detection, by Laurie R. King. I'm a rabid fan of King's Mary Russell mystery series, the first book of which (The Beekeeper's Apprentice) is another of my all-time favorite books. This title is the most recent of King's Kate Martinelli series and centers around a female homicide detective working in present-day San Francisco. I haven't been too interested in this series before, but The Art of Detection crosses over with the Mary Russell series and that's enough to get me interested! It's a fairly recent book and there aren't any used paperbacks available, so I got my copy from Borders with a nice 30% off coupon.

I spent about $10 total on the two books above, but the second two books I'm taking are from my "already own, haven't read yet" pile.



His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik. This one has been getting serious buzz for awhile, and is in the works to be made into a film directed by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame). That alone would be enough for me to buy a copy, but I actually bought it well-before that particular tidbit of news broke. This is a novel about the Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons! I love books that take a well-established historical topic and give it a twist, so I think this one will be a big hit.



White as Snow, by Tanith Lee. This is a dark, fantasy-tinged fairy-tale adaptation that blends Snow White with the story of Demeter and Persephone (my favorite Greek myth). I bought it over Christmas break two years ago, right before I moved up to Portland. I was envisioning plenty of free time and a lack of reading material, so I went on a bit of a book-buying spree that Christmas. What I failed to realize was how wholly Powell's would earn my devotion and take over my bookshelves, with the end result that I still have not yet read this book. That shall be changed! I'm looking forward to it, even though I have a pretty good idea there's no happy ending.

I'll try to follow up after I get back with a review of these books, just in case any of you want to look one or two of them up!