When you think about the holidays, you tend to associate memories to those locations; the foods you ate, the sights you saw, the moments in your life that are special. I’m not sure if I’m a little different or if there are others but I also associate a book or two with the holidays. Now I was away in Adelaide recently and I got to thinking about this and wondered which books I might associate with this trip.
It is not just the books I’ve read while on holidays, it could all include the books I might have bought while there. It is weird; I associate my honeymoon with Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, while that is nowhere near romantic it was what my new wife was reading when we first got into America. If I actually want to break up my honeymoon a little further so the whole thing is not associated with Vonnegut, I could say I associate Los Angeles with Breakfast of Champions, A Study in Scarlet for Las Vegas (I believe I was reading that at the time) and San Francisco is associated with poems by John Keats, which is more romantic, we saw a movie called Bright Star while in San Fran and I brought a collection of romantic poems from City Lights.
It is not just my Honeymoon; Spain reminds me of The Long Goodbye, driving to Paris reminds me of the God-awful Nowhere Man and Paris itself reminds me of Red Harvest. Two trips to New Zealand included Blood Meridian the first time and The 5th Wave the second (with TransAtlantic the perfect book for the flight). Then there was a recent trip to Melbourne that reminds me of Burial Rites but the lonely trip home reminds me of The People of Forever Are Not Afraid and the list goes on. It is interesting how I associate these experiences with books and wonder if people do this with holidays or other moments in your life?
I wonder what my recent trip to Adelaide will be associated with; could it be Barracuda, Solo, Paddle Your Own Canoe or even High Fidelity? Let me know in the comments if you do something similar? I have to think about some key moments in my recent life and see if they are associated with books. I’m not too sure, I do associate one wedding anniversary with a beautiful copy of Frankenstein; I wonder if all those weird books I associate with my marriage says something about me or my marriage?
Italy (more specifically The Amalfi Coast) reminds me of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Read it in one day during my honeymoon.
Nice choice for your honeymoon
I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Hearing where you’ve travelled to and the books in your life at that time. You are not alone there Michael; I do the same thing.
With my Europe trip, I didn’t read any novels because I had the Lonely Planet guide, glued to me. I studied this book back to front to ensure that I didn’t miss anything and highlighted everything I wanted to see. And I got to see it all too 🙂
I do remember an Easter holiday break with my family in Mildura, where my niece introduced me to the Twilight series.
In Adelaide I went on a secondhand bookstore hunt and I associate it with The Outlander. Everyone was taking about the book at the time and I thought it was a great find.
In New Zealand, I read The Little People by Jane Sullivan. I was excited about this book because I won it. I hadn’t won many books at the time so I wanted to save it for this occasion.
On my recent trip to the US, I associate Let the Games Begin with San Francisco and City Lights books. They had an amazing Translated fiction section and the cover of the book caught my eye. And of course I could leave without buying something 😉
But LA was special. I intentionally saved The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler for LA because I’ve always wanted to read a book set in the same place as my holiday destination. It was a great experience.
The Big Sleep while in LA would of been a surreal experience
During my o/s working holiday in 1991 I took only one book with me – Homer’s The Odyssey. But I read so, so many more that they are forever linked to that time (as are songs).
I read Forever Amber in London, Persuasion in Bath and Silence of the Lambs on the ferry crossing from Amsterdam! The little library in Highgate where I lived for 6 mnths had an amazing selection of Virago modern classics – any time I see one of those old green covers I feel homesick for that tie in my life 🙂
I now consciously try to select appropriate books for holidays.
My first trip to the snow with my husband, I took Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow to reread.
A trip to WA included Cloudstreet (of course!) but I also picked up a copy of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and I now forever link this Indian epic to the Margaret River!
I also wrote a post about holiday reading in Bali if you’d like to check it out…
http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/holiday-reading-bali.html
great post by the way – it’s got me thinking about all the great trips I’ve had and the books that go with them 🙂
Your holidays feel very high brow 😛
Ba ha! I forgot to mention our most recent trip to the UK in 2007 was all about the rugby world cup….so I dragged my hubby to as many Jane Austen sites along the way to balance the trip out 😀
Good for you, you can’t go to the UK without experiencing something from their rich literary history.
Great post! I too have book memories with certain trips, nothing significant like yours, but a recent one I’ll remember listening to World War Z in the car with my husband as we drove to Aspen for him to attend the summer music festival there. 🙂
I find it to be a great way to remember my holidays
i remember reading Breakfast of Champions on our honeymoon. What a bizarre book. then i read an F Scott Fitzgerald book. And I also picked up the first Tales of the City book in San Francisco.
I remember reading Nowhere Man on the train from Spain to France and to this day i’m not sure if the book was as great because of its writing or because of the experience it came wrapped in. I also read Joanna Penn’s Pentecost while in Paris, and I also loved that experience.
It must of been your experience, because the book was terrible