Let’s Talk with James M. Jackson

Vacation Reading by James M. Jackson

When I go on a vacation that involves airplane travel, my reading habits change. I leave my to-be-read (TBR) pile of physical books behind and rely on my Kindle to supply my reading needs. My physical TBR pile consists mostly of books I have obtained at mystery conferences acquired from conference goody bags or purchases I made at conferences. My pile is supplemented by Christmas and birthday gifts, which run to nonfiction.

My primary electronic reader is a Kindle, although I do sometimes read on my Android phone. I have an Amazon Prime membership that allows me a free book each month, plus an unlimited number of borrows—both from limited selections, of course. Because these are “free,” I feel liberated to take chances on new authors, different genres—whatever strikes my fancy.

While traveling in and around Antarctica last month, we had several “at sea” days. I spent lots of time on the deck watching and trying to identify pelagic birds, but that still allowed plenty of time for reading. In preparation for the trip, I downloaded the maximum ten books I could borrow plus a Prime First Read. I already had many unread books on my Kindle, including a few either Jan or I had purchased.

Over the three weeks I read six books, starting with two mysteries from favorite authors. Then I started experimenting with books by authors I didn’t know. I alternated between mysteries and YA fantasies. I was lucky in my choices and didn’t pick up any klunkers. In fact, I enjoyed two of the new-to-me authors—one from each genre—well enough to want to read more of their books. That’s a good success rate for me.

How about you, do you change your reading habits when you go on vacation?

<> And while you’re here, remember to enter our Gift Card Giveaway which runs March 1-18, 2018. Click here! <>

Comments

  1. tinawhittle says

    Yes, in that I actually get to read whole books at a time instead of cramming them in willy-nilly. Ah, the luxury of it all.

  2. I always take my Kindle when I travel – but most of my reading is done on the plane/on the train/en route somewhere.

  3. I used to travel with a ton of books, ones I thought I’d read and leave behind. Now I leave them behind before I go and take only my ereader. My reading habits don’t change much, although if I’ve promised to read an ARC, I might slip out of my top-preferred genre. Last year, I read nothing but books for contests, so it’s nice to be back to choosing what I want to read and catch up on my favorite authors.

  4. Yes, on vacation I like to read for pleasure. This is mostly scifi/fantasy, some YA fiction, historical romance or mystery. I’ve found a lot of new authors through The Fussy Library and go on to read their entire series. I belong to Prime, also, and thought we were only allowed one borrow per month. Has their policy changed?
https://bookloversbench.com/lets-talk-with-james-m-jackson-16/
bookloversbench.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-39
36403
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:7AZPM47B5BQW2U3QHYUBRYNY6CT5Y2IQ
<urn:uuid:a32e5dd2-6b60-4aba-a7af-aee93c7b8814>
2021-09-23T15:18:51Z
35.209.0.9
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:KUUN7F3J2S6CK4ZZWSX5HJU2PEWOMBP2
<urn:uuid:cb91d0bd-eb6b-45ca-86cd-44ed653a6d0a>
https://bookloversbench.com/lets-talk-with-james-m-jackson-16/
response
<urn:uuid:8806af4b-f199-4e87-878c-51b5af227843>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-20
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/