'Cheap compared to most holidays': Book a holiday just to read

We've all exceeded airline weight limits or the carrying capacity of our backs by stuffing books into a suitcase, only to return home without opening a single volume. But books don't have to be side notes for a vacation. Make them the stars of your next break and you've got a weatherproof, flight-cancellation-free and Covid-safe itinerary. Change your library card or raid your friends' shelves, and your trip will be economical too.
Think of the summer Jennifer Byrne spent in Russia 19th century with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "expressionistic, complex, psychological stories" and Leo Tolstoy's "softer novels." "They were like mountains you knew you had to climb one day," says the former host of The Book Club on ABC TV.
These Russian classics are epic: Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov is around 800 pages and War and Peace by Tolstoy has over 1,200 of them. These heavy novels get pushed back onto the to-read list throughout the year, but on book holidays they're much easier to conquer. Byrne remembers having worked on these titles "in a happy way" - by rewarding themselves with chocolate during the games of difficult.
Sarah Malik finds a similar joy in "getting lost in novels and unread piles that I never I haven't had time to read during the year". The writer, podcaster and editor of Safar - a collection of travelogues by Muslim women - constantly juggles reading obligations for work. So it was a joy, she says, to "go completely offline" during the summer and just read for fun.
"During times when I I'm really busy, I've been romanticizing deeply horrific experiences just so I can read books," says Benjamin Law, writer and co-host of ABC RN's Stop Everything!
It's a common and distorted fantasy: having a broken leg will finally give us time to work through those unopened memories and mysteries. But the solution may be less drastic - like disconnecting from communication and non-essential digital entertainment, like Law had to do for an upcoming TV project. "I brought all these books that I wanted to read and it was awesome," he says. "I didn't know I I could read an entire book in a day. I didn't know I was physically capable of it. I didn't know it was legal!"

Lifestyle Dec 28, 2022 0 37 Add to Reading List

'Cheap compared to most holidays': Book a holiday just to read

We've all exceeded airline weight limits or the carrying capacity of our backs by stuffing books into a suitcase, only to return home without opening a single volume. But books don't have to be side notes for a vacation. Make them the stars of your next break and you've got a weatherproof, flight-cancellation-free and Covid-safe itinerary. Change your library card or raid your friends' shelves, and your trip will be economical too.

Think of the summer Jennifer Byrne spent in Russia 19th century with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "expressionistic, complex, psychological stories" and Leo Tolstoy's "softer novels." "They were like mountains you knew you had to climb one day," says the former host of The Book Club on ABC TV.

These Russian classics are epic: Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov is around 800 pages and War and Peace by Tolstoy has over 1,200 of them. These heavy novels get pushed back onto the to-read list throughout the year, but on book holidays they're much easier to conquer. Byrne remembers having worked on these titles "in a happy way" - by rewarding themselves with chocolate during the games of difficult.

Once a Stranger by Zoya Patel, Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey; Gabor Mate's Myth of Normalcy; Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran; G. Willow Wilson's Bird King and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead make up Sarah Malik's stack of summer reads. » src=

Sarah Malik finds a similar joy in "getting lost in novels and unread piles that I never I haven't had time to read during the year". The writer, podcaster and editor of Safar - a collection of travelogues by Muslim women - constantly juggles reading obligations for work. So it was a joy, she says, to "go completely offline" during the summer and just read for fun.

"During times when I I'm really busy, I've been romanticizing deeply horrific experiences just so I can read books," says Benjamin Law, writer and co-host of ABC RN's Stop Everything!

It's a common and distorted fantasy: having a broken leg will finally give us time to work through those unopened memories and mysteries. But the solution may be less drastic - like disconnecting from communication and non-essential digital entertainment, like Law had to do for an upcoming TV project. "I brought all these books that I wanted to read and it was awesome," he says. "I didn't know I I could read an entire book in a day. I didn't know I was physically capable of it. I didn't know it was legal!"