If you click on the photo you can see more details of this bevy of books that I'll be secreting about my person during my travels. (Jacket with big pockets means less baggage room taken up with books.) Some of them will be discarded along the way.
This is the novel I'll be taking on the plane to read. Spotted recently in a charity shop - perfect holiday reading for my the first leg of my journey. I may well have it read before landing, as I have a long wait between planes in Madrid and then a 12 hour flight so the airport there would be a great place to leave it for the next traveller to find.
This is a short (small/lightweight book which I thought was ideal 'emergency' reading. (Imagine being stuck somewhere with nothing to read!) The title means 'Delay' and is about someone who has hours to kill when his flight is delayed.
This is my Moleskine notebook - chosen because Chatwin was obsessed with writing only in this brand, nothing else would do and when there were rumours that their production was to be stopped he bought as many as he could lay his hands on. Mine is the classic pocket notebook, with lined pages and a foldaway pocket inside the back cover.
This is one I'd like to read whilst on the bus heading south. I did at one point think of taking my bike with me to Patagonia but the thought of battling against the freezing winds on endless roads there was just too depressing to seriously contemplate. I am interested in his experiences with long distance biking though as one day I would like to go back to Lapland, with a bike with a place in the front for a dog.
The wee red book is a lovely old Spanish/Dutch dictionary Riny gave me. It's smaller than the English/Spanish dictionaries I have so that's the one that'll be helping me out with my attempts at communicating with the locals.
