I've been thinking a lot about travelling and books lately, as I get ready to depart for five days in Oregon. My focus will certainly be on my sister's wedding and quality time with friends and family, but I can't travel without something good to read, and the flight from Detroit to Portland is long enough to plow through an average sized novel.
A friend is heading to Vietnam, and we were recently chatting about what he should read on the flight; I suggested The Quiet American by Graham Greene, a short spy novel that takes place in Vietnam, which funnily enough, I read last time I traveled to Oregon. It made me realize how I never read books that are appropriate for my destination--I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I started reflecting on my most recent trips and the books that I associate with those memories. When you examine the titles as a group, it almost seems like I'm deliberately choosing books that geographically oppose my destinations.
Austin, Texas -- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (Cowboy boots, tacos, Lone Star beers, and British colonialism)
Portland, Oregon -- The Quiet American by Graham Greene and The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever (What better way to see the West Coast than to read a definitive East Coast novel?)
Vienna, Austria -- Brazil by John Updike (Yes, really. This makes no sense, but in my defense I was there studying art and did plenty of reading on the Secession and Rubens, so I needed a book that was a total escape)
Cozumel, Mexico -- several P.G. Wodehouse novels (nothing like a hike through some Mayan Ruins followed by a farce of the British aristocracy. These makes good poolside books though...)
West Palm Beach, Florida -- White Teeth by Zadie Smith (hanging out with wealthy retirees while reading about working class NW London immigrants)
Las Vegas, Nevada -- The Secret History by Donna Tartt (the tenuous argument could be made that this book and the Las Vegas architecture share a lot of references to Classicism)
New York -- Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Nothing says magical realism like NYC in March
Mexico City, Mexico -- East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Um...the desert?)
Various Michigan road trips -- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, Little Century by Anna Keesey (Toronto sci-fi murder mystery, California counter-culture essays, Oregon-based farming epic)
Would these trips be enhanced at all by my choosing more appropriate literature? I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe and Big Sur by Jack Kerouac on a trip to San Francisco when I was younger, but I hated both of those books, so I guess it set me on a course of reading utterly random books when I travel. But the funny thing is that it's always about more than just killing time on an airplane for me-- the places where I read these books are so strongly associated with my impressions and memories of the texts. When I think about Brazil, I picture a Viennese cafe, and I can taste the Turkish coffee (which tastes bad, btw). When I think about The Secret History, I remember the view of the Vegas strip from my hotel window at night. There is nothing more to these associations than those forged in my own mind, and so naturally they help mold my impressions of the books, for better or worse.
Which brings me back to my upcoming trip to Oregon and the books I've picked to accompany me: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, two books with no affiliation to Oregon or marriage. I'm really looking forward to both of them, and I'm curious how my travel experiences will inform my readership, but I'm not going to suddenly become so self-aware about it that it ruins the books for me.
What do you like to read when you travel? What should I be reading on a trip to an Oregon wedding?