Best part of vacation?

Oh sure, I like the sun, the food, the pampering, etc., but for me the best thing about vacation might be just having time to get engrossed in a book or two. I spent this vacation reading Bangkok 8 by John Burdett, which is a mystery set in (who would have guessed?) Bangkok. A good read, especially while on holiday in Asia. I also read Geoff Dyer's Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, a sometimes funny and interesting, sometimes banal collection of essays. Toward the end of vacation I started The Da Vinci Code, which I had put off because of all the hype. I'm still not sure what I think of the underlying premise, but it's entertaining if nothing else--good beach reading.

Gretchen also got into the reading spirit. While she would be the first to admit she's not generally much of a reader (especially fiction), if a book engages her she gets really into it. She had good luck in that regard--first she powered through A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy, which she didn't know anything about but picked up on a whim one day. Usually I'm the one saying "just let me finish this chapter", but this time around she was the one who wouldn't budge until she got through the part she was reading. Then she read Åsne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul, a nonfiction book about life under the Taliban. I had picked this one up on a whim, and she really seemed to like it so now I'm going to have to find time to read it soon.