... has been deciding which books to take along, and which to
leave behind. Anyone to whom this comes as a surprise doesn't know me at all.
It's really upsetting, because books seem so deceptively
packable: so small, so wonderfully rectangular. But they weigh a ton, and I'm
flirting with the fifty-pound weight limit on my two bags to be checked as it
is. Hence, I'm going to be that weird girl in the airport carrying roughly
twenty books in her carry-on. I amuse myself by imagining what a conversation
with a curious neighbor during my layover in O'Hare might sound like:
"Yes, these are all for the flight. Well, you see, I'm a very fast reader."
I think I've settled on a smattering of the American classics:
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, To Kill A Mocking Bird and
my very well-loved copy of Little Women. I have no
great love of Huck Finn or The
Catcher in the Rye, so they can stay here. I'd like to add a couple of
more contemporary representatives—McCarthy, maybe, or Middlesex or The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. My
John Irving collection was eyeing me expectantly just now. But
there are a few non-American essentials that take precedence by merit of
sentimental value: Wuthering Heights, as
I've mentioned in a previous post; Jane Eyre and any one of several Virginia Woolf works. My
Barnes & Noble paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice might
not survive the journey, but it's coming too. Additionally, I have a
trans-Atlantic reading of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses planned,
and I really ought to give Infinite
Jest a crack because I may never have such ample free time again...
Well, I could go on and on with in depth analyses of every book on
my bookshelf, whether it's coming and why. But the point is that I don't have
room for every book I might conceivably want, maddening as it is. Most, if
not all, of these books are coming purely for emotional support, anyway, as I
fully intend to get to work on my German reading list as soon as I can find my
way to a bookstore.
Nevertheless, I will probably spend a good couple of hours tonight
packing and unpacking and repacking and making changes to the lineup. And I may
find myself in Germany, begging my parents to ship over something I left behind
that suddenly seems absolutely essential. These are all things future
generations whose exposure with the written word is exclusively digital won’t have
to worry about. But I like my paper-and-ink books, dammit, and I want them. They just won’t fit in my bags.
#First world problems.
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