Story Hoarder

As you already know, I am an avid reader, and reading is not only one of my favorite things to do but is also something I feel really constitutes a big part of who I am.

When I was younger I had a habit of never leaving a book I started reading, even if I didn’t like it. As I grew older I became (a little) less strong-headed and also realized that if I don’t seem to “click” with a certain a book, there are two possibilities:

1. I really don’t like the book. In this case – why suffer? Better go on to something more enjoyable.

2. This is not the right timing for me to meet this book. I have let a few books “ripe” in my library, and to my surprise a    book I could not get over page 20 in at one point was read in one continous read three years later.

That said, I sometimes go through periods in which I find it very difficult to read anything. These episodes are rare, but they do happen. They make me wonder – is there a “Reader’s Block” similar to a writer’s block?

Lately I find myself picking one book after another, reading a few dozen pages and leaving them for a later date, or moving very slowly through them. I started getting worried until I found this lovely book – The Oxford Murders (Crímenes imperceptibles) by Argentinian author Guillermo Martínez – an enjoyable, easy to read, intelligent little thriller that I finished in two days’ reading on the bus on my way to work.

Although I am still struggling with other books I started, this gave me hope that this phase shall and can pass.

Hello all. I have just got back from an 11-day tour with my boyfriend in the fantastic land of Georgia (the country, not the US state).A few details and some lovely pictures from this trip can be found in this post on his blog.

One of the things that really struck me as a reader is that although I brought books with me, the nest read for me throughout the trip were guidebooks. We had three guides: Lonely Planet Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijan Travel Guide – highly recommended ; Bradt Georgia Travel Guide – which we found quite unhelpful; and Peter Nasmyth’s Walking in the Caucasus – a very good book to guide you through the many very worthwhile walks this country offers.

In the many hours we spent on buses, taxis and cars I found myself going back to these guides again and again. This has happened to me on other trips abroad as well. Maybe it’s the wish not to disrupt the spirit of traveling that engulfs you during such trips, the wish to be completely there and not wander anywhere else.

One of the interesting people we met on the trip was Cathy, a British woman living in the US for many years, who has decided to take early retirement and go on all the trips she wished she had and never got around to. In this post she also talks of the fascination of travel guides from a different angle.

If you don’t get to travel (which is very recommended), you can at least grab one of these books and walk into some place completely different and fascinating.

I’ll leave you with one picture from the beautiful land of Georgia: