Vacation reading, unpacked

A good book makes getting there and back special, too

Now that some of us are planning to travel again, it’s time to consider the delicious question of vacation reading. Everyone has their own idea of what it should look like. Mine was formed at the end of a holiday weekend in middle school in the 1970s, when my friend Michelle and I pretzeled ourselves into her parents’ station wagon for the long, dull ride to New York from Massachusetts.

The end of a vacation is an occasion for sadness. There were no cellphones to amuse us back then, and the darkness prevented us from flirting with boys in other cars. We were beset by ennui in the way of the sisters in Nancy Mitford’s “Pursuit of Love,” endlessly speculating about what time it was. What saved us was the single book Michelle produced from her bag, in a Hail Mary literary move: “The Silver Crown,” by Robert C. O’Brien.

Reading that book in that car at that time transformed one of the worst parts of traveling — the actual traveling — into an interlude of delight. “The Silver Crown” is the story of a girl who receives a shimmery crown on her 10th birthday and is then pursued by mysterious figures with nefarious intent. It thrilled and unsettled us. We took turns reading by flashlight — Michelle read a chapter, and then I did, passing the book back and forth as we sprawled out in between the luggage and the bags of groceries in our little no-seat belt fort in the very back of the car.

It was the best car trip I’ve ever taken, and it cemented in me the idea that a vacation book doesn’t need to have anything to do with where you are; it can be a destination in itself. By taking you out of your head in those in-between moments — waiting at the gate to board the plane, riding in the back of the bus between cities, lying in bed during the first night of jet-lagged

insomnia — it can restore you to yourself. It cures your boredom, soothes your anxiety and provides constancy.

Not everyone thinks of a book as a security blanket. My husband feels his vacation reading — ideally done on a chaise by a gentle body of water — is the only time he can really sink into a book without guilt. Other travelers like to match the material to the trip. I applaud them, and if I were less haphazard, I would do it, too. What better way to enhance your trip to Morocco than by seeing it through the experienced eyes of Paul Bowles, and what better opportunity to understand the origins of modern Italy than by reading Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s

“The Leopard”?

Anyone thinking of hiking in the wilds of Western Australia — or any woman wanting to make the trip by herself — would only be inspired by first reading Robyn Davidson’s “Tracks,” about her epic excursion from Alice Springs to the

coast, accompanied by a dog and four camels. Traveling to London after reading Charles Dickens is great fun, not just for his writing but for his geography. (How thrilling to walk the real Chancery Lane after reading it so memorably portrayed in “Bleak House.”)

Then there is travel writing itself. The works of classic travel writers, people like Jan Morris, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Paul Theroux, Rebecca West and Herodotus, take readers on two trips at once. One is the physical and intellectual trip, of course, the journey through Poland or Greece or Venice, Italy, and through the history of those places.

The second is the emotional trip. “The best travel writers are not really writing about travel at all,” Morris observed. “They are recording the effects of places or movements upon their own particular temperaments — recording the experience rather than the event, as they might make literary use

of a love affair, an enigma or a tragedy.”

I generally choose my vacation books in the manner of a bride organizing her “something old, something new” accessories. One contemporary book I’ve been saving as a reward — this summer, it might be Jennifer Egan’s “The Candy House”; one book I’ve been meaning to read but have not yet gotten to — perhaps Shirley Hazzard’s “Transit of Venus.” Also: one absorbing thriller. And then one comforting old friend, often a children’s book like “Charlotte’s Web” or “The Golden Compass.” And I’ll take my Kindle, which is no fun as a literary delivery mechanism, but which has the benefit of putting the world’s library at your fingertips.

If you do it right, you will get off the plane so enamored of your book you’ll want to keep reading in the customs line, and then while waiting for your luggage, and then in the hotel to help you calm down before going to sleep.

Getty Images A vacation book can take you out of your head as you wait for a flight or lie in bed, suffering from jet lag. It can cure boredom and soothe anxiety.