I’ve mentioned before that I am preparing for an upcoming trip to the land of Japan – not just for a holiday, though, for a whopping seven months.  The plane tickets are booked, accommodation is sorted, the adrenaline is building and the packing is just about to commence.  Then I ask myself, if I can’t last a good two-week holiday without taking along at least five books (three of which I will never read, to be sure), what am I going to do with myself for seven months without taking so many books that I have to pay most of my savings in excess baggage weight allowances to fit in my library?

Yes, that’s right, there is a Japanese word for this.

Of course, I won’t go a kindle.  It’s too late now.  I’m a geek for hardcover and I can’t go back now.  Parents have raised the concept, and even offered to fund the concept, but I refuse.  I will do this the traditional way come hell or high water (or both).  (Sorry, tsunami jokes aren’t very tasteful, are they?)

So I’ve come to accept the fact that, as I won’t take a kindle and as I will continue to read profusely during my travels, I may have to choose only a few books to take.  Perhaps less than ten.  Perhaps only a couple more than two.  Perhaps only four.  Or three.  But what should I take?  Which writers will have their works chosen to occupy a coveted position in my suitcase?  And should I take only things that I haven’t read before or should I include an old favourite that will remind me of home and which I know will keep me occupied?  The questions never end.

Thankfully, Japan itself has inspired me to come up with a solution to this problem.  You see, Japan (and now other places abroad) is home to a chain of stores called ‘Book-off’, the concept of which is not completely new, but is performed better by the Japanese than by anyone else.  The idea is that you can buy second-hand books there (and not just books but comics and CDs and DVDs and whatever you want, really) and you can also sell them.  Thankfully they also have sections for the awkward foreigner which have English language books.

Therefore, I have decided that over the course of my travels I will ‘do the Book-off thing’, as I have now phrased it.  Once I’ve run out of my from-home-books, I’ll buy something remotely interesting and thoroughly second-hand from one of the many Book-off stores that dot the countryside of Japan, read it, and then sell it again at another store.  Therefore I don’t have to carry it in my suitcase, nor do I have to worry about buying something terrible which will then loiter in my bookshelves next to all the beautiful literature I have been so painstakingly accumulating.  Problem solved!

But now the question remains: what should be included in my from-home-books list?  I’m thinking something large rather than a couple of small things.  Two books large and loved, and one large and previously unread book.  For the previously read, I simply can’t go past DeLillo’s Underworld as this was probably the most incredible book I have read for a long, long time, and definitely book-of-the-year last year.  There’s also Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which I am currently reading and which I find very intriguing, so much so that I have to keep a pen attached to the cover so I can underline the best bits.  I actually read it while waiting in line for my lunch yesterday.  The people around probably thought me terribly rude, but I didn’t care as I was too busy stuck in the world of the Vermont summer and Ancient Greek literature.  Yes, I think those two will do.

Then, for my previously unread from-home-book, definitely something long-winded, philosophical, but classic.  A Tolstoy perhaps.  Or Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which I’ve been meaning to read for a while.  I was thinking perhaps War and Peace, but then I also thought about the inherent cliches of telling somebody ‘I’m reading War and Peace’.  I promise you all I will do a post ‘On Reading War and Peace’ while I’m reading War and Peace just to enlighten you about these worries.

So if you had to go on a long trip, what would you take?  Old favourites?  New and exciting novels?  A kindle, perhaps?

P.S. here is a picture of my Japan bookshelf.

(from left to right: lonely planet guide to Japan, Parry – ‘People Who Eat Darkness’, Mishima – ‘Death in Midsummer and Other Stories‘, Kerr – ‘Dogs and Demons, the Fall of Modern Japan’, Mitchell – ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’, Murakami – ‘Kafka on the Shore’, two dictionaries of Japanese grammar, Brown – ‘Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn’, Mitchell – ‘Number9Dream’, Mitchell – ‘Ghostwritten’, Mishima – ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’, lonely planet Tokyo, Murakami – ‘Norwegian Wood’, Takami – ‘Battle Royale‘, Penguin Parallel Texts – Short Stories Japanese-English, Murakami – ‘1Q84’, Mishima – ‘The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea’)