book dilemma

Tags

book, books, Ira Glass, Justin Cronin, Lisa McInerney, new books, Olivia Laing, reading, summer reads, The City of Mirrors, The Glorious Heresies, The Lonely City, The New Kings of Nonfiction

I have a problem – one of the literary kind. As someone who loves to read books are always a big part of any trip I take, but since books are heavy you can only ever take a few (yes I know there is Kindle, but I don’t have one and I do enjoy a ‘real’ book).

This year I wanted to be good, I had a plan: one book the rest would be borrowed or bought once abroad. But now that plan has been thwarted. Yesterday afternoon Amazon knocked on my door, books I had ordered a while ago had finally arrived and I wasn’t expecting them to, as they were per-ordered.

I only wanted to take the book I was reading, The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney and then give it to my sister. But since I started dipping in and out of The Lonely City by Olivia Laing I had succumb to the idea of two books, after all the second is sort of research. But now with the latest delivery I am faced with temptation.

One of the books that arrived is The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin, a book I have been waiting for. I stumbled on The Passage  a few years ago and devoured it, Luckily for me The twelve had just been published and I was able to keep reading. But it took until now (nearly three years) for the last in the trilogy to be published and I really don’t want to wait any longer to crack the spine. But it’s a heavy hardback and will take up a lot of space in my suitcase.

Another of the books is The New Kings of Nonfiction edited by Ira Glass, research for a project I am working on. It would be the perfect summer read, a balance to what I will be doing and time well spent while away,  but again 450 pages to carry with me.

The last two books are easy reads, summer books that I could wait to plunge into, but do I want to? After all the lure of a new book is hard to resist.

So now I have a bookish dilemma, how many books can I take or should I practice delayed gratification and suffer until the middle of August?

can I resist the lure?