Registered: 02/05/03
Posts: 3293
Loc: Portland, OR
I am too bookish to go without a book. One of my off-season tasks is searching out interesting paperbacks in a compact format that weigh about 6 oz. I tend to read for about an hour after going to bed each evening.
I have a marked preference for Penguin paperback editions, since they seem to have plenty of interesting titles, readable typefaces, and more pages per ounce than other mass market paperbacks.
Recently I bought a 1.5 oz 2GB "Zen Stone" MP3 player that has a small speaker I can listen to, since I hate earbuds. The battery lasts about 12 hours using the speaker on a low volume. This summer I will experiment with listening to books instead of reading them. If it works out, I can save about 1/4 lb!
I go to the used bookstore & pick a book based on size & weight. When I backpack where we have a fire the pages become firestarter or I have been known to pass a book piece by to piece to backpacking partners.
Yeah, I'm a reading addict too! I can do without but will spend time unraveling a garbage-juice soaked newspaper to read if that is an alternative. Our library has a "Friends of the Library" bookstore that has a huge selection of paperbacks. Prior to a trip I stop by and pick up my reading material. My tastes range from "sex and violence" thrillers to the more uplifting stuff such as the Tao Te Ching and Epictetus. What I take depends on my mood but I always have something with me to read.
No, I don't. My work requires a lot of professional reading, and my personal reading tastes run toward heavier non-fiction (Alan Greenspan's Age of Turbulence and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse are recent examples.) Those don't really fit in to the more laid-back hiking trips I prefer. I actually don't mind spending an hour or two sitting on the bank of a creek watching the water, or just sitting in camp sipping water and eating trail mix while the world gets dark around me.
Sometimes, though, I'll take along a map of the next trip I want to take, and start doing some planning.
There was almost a 20 year break in my backpacking when I returned to the trail with my bride. On our first trip I carried more than five pounds of trail guides. "Oh yeah, now I remember why I didn't do that before..."
So I started taking a Reader's Digest. If I got bored with that I studied the owner's manual of my camera or something similar. Now I take an mp3 player (I too have the Diamond books but haven't got to them yet). Trouble is, the narrated fiction I have lulls me to sleep...I don't know how many stories I've started over 'cause I slept through the ending...
FB
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"...inalienable rights...include the right to a clean and healthful environment..." Montana Constitution
Almost never leave home without a book. I try for a small paperback but have been know to take two . SciFi and Fantasy. I read enough heavy stuff for work I want entertainment on the trail. I even pack them back home too as I have been frequently know to reread books after a year or two.
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If I wouldn't eat it at home, why would I want to eat it on the trail?
I take a book. I do tons of professional reading and goo at work, but love to read, and don't associate professional reading with fun reading. I usually take a *small* paperback. but it depends on the trip. if I'm in my typical summer hiking mode I'll take a thin paperback that I can read a little bit of to fall asleep in my hammock at night, because I spend almost my entire day on the move, I still do like a "little bit" to read at night, but I might read a chapter or less.
In winter, or snowshoe weather. I take books. lots of big beefy read for hours books - because I know in winter I won't be moving all day, or even if I am the day is very short, so I spend a lot of time in camp. Doesn't mean I'll always spend it reading, but when it gets dark at 4 PM, It sure is nice to have a big read in a blizzard. I find it amazingly relaxing to just sit and read by candlelight, making the occasional cuppa tea, snuzzled in a pile of down when it's -25C and nasty outside my tent... But Maybe I'm weird
Cracked through the latest spider robinson on my most recent trip, but again, being on snow, and it only being travelable before mid afternoon, I was stopping early in the day.
One of my off-season tasks is searching out interesting paperbacks in a compact format that weigh about 6 oz...
I don't have a video camera yet, but here's the script for the clip I'd post if I did:
Ultralight-hiker-type in the stacks at the local used bookstore. He's got a digital scale on the table and a stack of paperback books beside it.
(Note: I think I'd use my sailor neighbor two slips over from me for the part, my friend Max, age 90, although he's gone sailing over in the Bahamas <with his 60-year-old girlfriend.> Dressed in some zip-off pants and a self-wicking TNF t-shirt, he could easily pass for [b]MY hiking partner.)
The "hiker" takes a book from the stack and sets it on the scale. He looks at the readout and then at the book, disgustedly.
Max: "Hmmmm. 'War and Peace,' -- Tolstoy. Seven ounces. Crap!" he says in a chagrined voice as he pitches it aside.[/b]
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...MP3 player that has a small speaker...
There's a chance we might have been at the same backcountry campsite last year. You had the small speaker(s) in your tent and we were camped across the lake from you when I reached over and shook my wife in our tent and grumbled something about Moby to her. She said, "I don't hear Moby!"
I bolted upright in the mummy bag, banging my head on the ceiling/roof of our single-walled Tarptent, and shouted, "It ain't Moby, somebody's reciting Melville's "Moby Dick!"
I really like Moby -- great hiking music. I'm definitely bringing some Moby and my speaker(s) if I can swing that NW-Pacific group trip this year. Haven't put my name in yet, but figure I'll do like Horst Buccholtz did in The Magnificent Seven and tag along about a quarter-mile behind til Yul Brenner (or who<whom>ever) waves me into camp. Like Horst, hopefully I'll bring just-caught fish.
(Two days til we leave Miami for the mountains, 4 good.)
Registered: 02/05/03
Posts: 3293
Loc: Portland, OR
I know you were just ribbing me, but I feel the need to defend my honor.
You must understand, I am so fond of solitude and so phobic of camping near others that last summer I did not spend a single night in a place where I was within a 1/3 mile of another tent. About 80% of the time there wasn't a soul within 3 miles of my campsite.
I go to the used bookstore & pick a book based on size & weight. When I backpack where we have a fire the pages become firestarter or I have been known to pass a book piece by to piece to backpacking partners.
+1.
Sometimes, the day's reading will easily heat water for meals in my Kelly Kettle. How's that for dual use?
Or......I just found an Iphone app that has 15 or so classics for a buck. I just started the Call of the Wild .
_________________________ If you only travel on sunny days you will never reach your destination.*
* May not apply at certain latitudes in Canada and elsewhere.
I always have books. Now I'm "sold" to ebooks reader! Batteries fully loaded, I can go for some evenings of reading (about 4000 pages). Of course not for weeks long trip in the backcountry without a computer in sight, but good for travelling, as it take one/one and a half hour on USB to be completely loaded. Lighter than a paperback, and about the same size...
I've yet to bring a book on the trail, though at the end of the day when I'm sitting around camp, I sometimes wish I had a book. Maybe I'll start doing so this year, who knows. Chances are I'll bring a book, set up camp, see a place I want to go check out and my book will be negelcted, lol.
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In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.-Aristotle
Yeah, just kidding -- I'll do anything in a weak attempt at a joke.
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I am so fond of solitude and so phobic of camping near others that last summer I did not spend a single night in a place where I was within a 1/3 mile of another tent.
I plan on doing the same thing when we get to Colorado, only I'll publish endless posts, pix and a book about it and ruinitforme.
I take a few magazines, or sudoku/crossword paperbacks. Some come in a nice small size. During the colder months and the days are short, it gets pretty boring inside a tent with nothing much to do.
OK, I'm the anit-intellect! Most often I do not take a book. When I do, I seldom finish it because I am just too busy exploring and photographing. If I take a book it has to be under 6 oz. And there is nothing worse than carrying the extra weight of a book, only to have it turn out to be a bad book. In the evening in the tent, I write about the day and study my maps to get a good feel for the next day's travel. I am also a person that has no trouble going to sleep at 7PM and getting 10-12 hours sleep!
Registered: 02/01/05
Posts: 13
Loc: Northern California
I've gotten into the habit of getting audio-books & take an IPod Classic w me w the recorded audio-books, that way I only have the very low weight of the IPod (I think 7 oz?), but I have a number of audio book options as well as different recordings (music, meditation recordings,etc.) so whatever mood I'm in to listen to presentations on different subjects I have that option! The battery life of the IPod Classic is 30 hours - so I've yet to run out of battery life on any of my trips!
Registered: 02/03/06
Posts: 6800
Loc: Gateway to Columbia Gorge
With War and Peace, why would anyone want to take the whole book for one trip? It's not exactly fast reading, even for a speed reader like me.
For backpacking trips, I sliced up an old ratty pocket edition Bible and carry the section I'm reading in a sandwich bag. Generally only about 1/2 ounce. There's nothing wrong with slicing up a Bible or any other book into sections. The Bible is quite slow reading so is perfect for this purpose.
When traveling, I generally took along a novel in French, since my reading speed in French is a fraction of what it is in English. For a three month's trip, something like Dumas' "Les Trois Mousquetaires" (Three Musketeers) was perfect--I didn't get to the end until almost the end of the flight home from Europe!
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view--E. Abbey
When traveling, I generally took along a novel in French, since my reading speed in French is a fraction of what it is in English. For a three month's trip, something like Dumas' "Les Trois Mousquetaires" (Three Musketeers) was perfect--I didn't get to the end until almost the end of the flight home from Europe!
Weird, I do exactly the same, usually take books in english, not that I'm slower, but because I tend to read for shorter periods (I would devour a whole book in one session...)...And when travelling english books are easy to swap, too! Even the books I have downloaded in my ereader are mostly in english...
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