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Vacation Preparation Step #2: Old-fashioned Readin' Books

The last few books I've read recently have covered a fair sample of contemporary literature:

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
A Walk In The Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail - Bill Bryson
Kitchen Confidential - Andthony Bourdain
Naked - David Sedaris
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcom Gladwell

You need similar breadth for a trip to the beach. You need a good mix of quick-hit stuff you can read for ten minutes before falling asleep on the couch for a 10:30am nap, and you also need the ones that will get you through a 3-4 hour stretch on the sand. I'm thinking about trying these:

Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Darwin Awards - Wendy Northcutt
Notes From The Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away - Bill Bryson
The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works - Ricardo Semler
MBA In A Box: Practical Ideas from the Best Brains in Business - Joel Kurtzman et al

It's important to bring a maximum of three of these books with you. If you want to have a chance at finishing one of these in a week, you have to maintain some amount of focus. (Unless you're my oldest sister, who could easily read all of these before breakfast on third day. And in that case, you've probably read all of these already anyway.)

There's something about the laze of vacation that produces an enhanced feeling of accomplishment when one finishes a book after one has accomplished virtually nothing else that week.

It's also important to bring an old favorite that's been collecting dust on your book shelf. You always want one that you can fall back on in case the others turn out to be duds.