tn4

Travel reading.

I believe it’s important to think of traveling as another way to step outside of your comfort zone with your reading as well as your physical travel experiences. Not always do that two have to have similar subject matter but I find that sometimes the subject matter in a book I take while traveling resonates somewhat with the new, unfamiliar surroundings.

My last time in Taiwan I took along a few sci-fi books by Stanislaw Lem. I figured that as crazy as his writing sometimes is it would be a welcome addition to how strangely peculiar I find Taipei. The two scenes, one in my reading mind and one before my eyes as I traveled, never really overlapped perfectly but I could find some of the unfamiliar-ness of that architecture/culture/people creeping into my daily walking and reading. When I imagined a restaurant in my book it became the one I passed in an alleyway around the corner from my Nan-jing Road hotel. Somehow because there was a picture of a location in my book now available in reality down the street I became a living participant in the book. My mind allowed the skip in logic to mold the two around one another.

So, last night I was moving through a bookstore trying to decide on what to bring. Sometimes the things I choose for a trip aren’t premeditated, they’re just thrown in at the last minute, which often seems the best way of making a decision. I’m often drawn back to the same books over and over again. They’re comfortable but I’m not taking in anything new.

As daily interest in a single topic wanes I hope to bring along a few books that can be read in fits and starts, over lunch, at the motel, etc. Anyone have a suggestion?