I'm a huge book lover. I own more than 300 of them and I've read almost all of those. I also love going on vacation, particularly to the beach. Naturally, I also love taking books on the beach and reading in the sand while the waves come up and gently hit my feet, but it can be really hard to choose which books to take with me. Thus I give you, the inner monologue of a book lover trying to decide which books to take to the beach.
It all starts when you either visit a bookstore or order some new things online. You tell people "oh, it's for vacation" even though they all know you're just a crazy, compulsive book buyer with no control over your wallet. This probably starts a few weeks before and by the time vacation actually rolls around, you've got five or six new books that you've supposedly bought just to take with you.
But then, you start to question yourself. Why on earth would you take brand-new paperbacks onto the beach to get them covered in sand and saltwater and sunscreen? What kind of a monster are you? So, you stop and reconsider. Should you really just be taking the beaten up paperbacks you bought at that yard sale six months ago because they were cheap? Hmmm... maybe you should.
But, you start second guessing yourself again. You read some of those yard sale paperbacks on your kindle already and you really just bought them because you realized that you actually hate reading online and would much rather have the book. And you have so many new things you could take instead of those that you've already read. Basically, you're back to where you started from, just with a broader range.
Now, everything that you own but haven't read yet as well as some of those worn out books are on your shortlist. And by shortlist, I mean 25 or so. What do you do? You start really looking at all of them. The first ones to eliminate are the ones that are really thick. The fear that the spine might just fall apart if they get wet is too real to ignore. Then you check out the covers. You probably want to leave the glossy ones at home because what if the sunscreen takes away the shine?
The result of all of this: you end up packing 10 books into a backpack and just hope no one makes fun of you for not being able to choose once they realize what you've done.
But hey, don't let them get you down. You love your books and you love to read and this is your vacation. You do you and read your heart out!
