Holiday Reading

At the end of the week I’m off on ‘holiday’ – I’m packing up the Scottish one and taking him north to my father’s for a couple of weeks. The extra punctuation is because they’re in the middle of a house move and because I made the mistake of having a look at the weather forecast again (it looked okay yesterday, but pretty bloody foul today). I love my family, and I love Shetland but unrelenting rain doesn’t improve either, so getting the holiday reading right is crucial and tonight I’m rifling the shelves for suitable candidates.

Air travel and family time both put certain constraints on packing, after a couple of thick woolly jumpers the next most important thing to go in the case is as much wine as I can carry for family consumption (and a bottle of something harder to sedate the Scottish one should he feel the need for it). I reckon that leaves me space for four books; no hardbacks, nothing to ambitious (failed to read Ulysses on two different trips), but something with a bit of substance to it, nothing I can read in a day however tempting it is, things which will cover a variety of moods, and finally books which might also appeal to my travelling companion if the whisky runs out and it really does rain all the time.

So...how hard can it be to make that sort of selection? That’s right, I’m struggling with the choice and have been doing so for some days, but right now this is the shortlist:

Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Jamaica Inn’ – I’ve always failed with Du Maurier, but feel like I should love her, and if I buckle down I might just crack it – and it should appeal to both of us.

Elizabeth Von Arnim’s ‘The Pastor’s Wife’, I’ve just got this and it’s very tempting. She’s likely to keep me absorbed when I do want to escape into a book.

Compton Mackenzie’s ‘Whisky Galore’ – we both want to read this and so it’s almost certainly coming with me, especially after enjoying ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ so much.

A S Byatt’s ‘The Children’s Book’ – I’ve wanted to read this since it came out and I don’t doubt it has a bit of substance to it!

Wilkie Collins – ‘The Law and the Lady’- it was Shetland summers which started me off on a love for Collins, so what better place to revisit him?

Rumer Godden’s ‘In This House of Brede’ which is another newish acquisition and another one which I hope will be utterly absorbing.

Vera Caspary’s ‘Laura’ – pulp fiction bought on a whim and actually looking very tempting about now...

As you can see already more books than I can really take with me, and of course they do have bookshops in Shetland, so which books do I weed out? ‘Persuasion’ is on as I write this, and it’s making me want to hit the Austen pretty hard which hardly makes the decision making process smoother. I spent some time thinking about it at work today with the end result that I ran over my foot when I was moving champagne cages. End result – my foot hurt and I still have to work out what to pack. Any suggestions gratefully received – though the irony is that once we’re settled in it’s probable there will be no reading at all.