Valet Reader

You and I both know that it’s incredibly uncommon for me to plant a rogue post into my blog. In fact, I think this very well may be my first one. It comes though at or on an important day. The day which I depart, to Colombia for three weeks away from my blog for the first time since I started posting to it. Ok, I know for a fact that ,while I’m away my blog will be worked on and once I return you will surely hear all about my trip as I continue to review books and tell you what’s happening during the week. But, regardless, I will still be away. I will not be able to religiously track my traffic, work on my reviews daily, do advanced research on events or peruse news sources for information. I will be “off the grid.” Thank f’ing God. It’s about time.

At approximately 230 pm, I will be boarding an airplane headed first for Houston, Texas. From, after several hours of waiting, I will board another plane and take off for Bogota, Colombia where I will land at 456am.

Packing for this trip was no easy task. What do you bring to a country you know very little about. In the end I decided not to bring much at all. After all, the cowboy boots and leather jacket I plan on getting there should get me through the trip right? I’m pretty sure I’ll look sexy as hell wearing only the boots and jacket, kind of porn star esque, no?

The packing actually wasn’t so hard. What was hard for me though was deciding what books to carry with me. In the end, what I decided to do was bring the three longest books I have on my shelves right now. I figured, why lug 8 smaller books around with me when I can just take 3 that equal in length (or are most likely longer) than the alternative of dealing with many titles. The books I’ve chosen to bring with me are David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

To give you a sneak peak I will provide you with completely unbiased and completely bullshit remarks about each book before I even open the first page. I will tell you that I know absolutely nothing about these books (ok, very very little) so this should be entertaining.

Infinite Jest – You may or may not recall that I reviewed another title by David Foster Wallace ages ago, Broom of the System. You may also recall that when I reviewed Skylight Books in Los Angeles last August I referenced Jest because at the time it was their top selling book. Seeing as the book was written in 1996 it seemed a little bizarre to me. But, as I did a bit of research, I learned that this was the book of all books for hipsters last Summer and that’s why it was selling so well. I’m kind of curious how many of those hipsters actually even opened the book or know how to read for that matter. Anyways, I put off reading Jest for ages cause I didn’t want to be mistaken for one of these people and also because it’s 1088 pages. I am though looking forward to reading it. From what I understand the story revolves around a film and how it affects it’s viewers, or something like that. I guess you’ll have to wait until my review to really find out what it’s all about and why so many hipsters thought it was cool. After all, a book like this can’t have staying power with hipsters, their attention span is about as short as the construction workers shorts from the village people.

A Fine Balance – A former co-worker of mine recommended this book to me about 6 months ago and I, again, have been meaning to read it for ages. Compared to Jest, it’s just a baby, coming in at 624 pages. I don’t really know anything about it other than that it takes place in India in the 70′s. For some reason I always thought this book would somehow or in someway be like Shantaram but secretly I’m hoping it won’t be. It is though an Oprah book so that certainly doesn’t do great things to elevate it in my mind. I guess time will tell how good it is. I just have to keep telling myself that just because Oprah liked it and got millions of housewives all over the country to read it doesn’t implicitly imply that I will not enjoy it.

Game of Thrones – This is the book which I know the least about. A friend of mine, who is subsequently launching Carstache soon, recommended this one to me. I think it’s a fantasy book or sci-fi book or an epic book type thing. Who know’s, but should I get through it or actually when I get through it you will be sure to hear more about it. I’m just hoping that there are unicorns that fight narwhales that fight squirrels that battle roosters in it. Cause those are my favorite type of fantasy books. Oh yeah, and each of the animals has to have a favorite type of candy they eat while battling like. The unicorn will eat licorice, the narwhales, sour patch kids, the squirrels, hot tamales and the roosters, peeps (just for the irony).

Ahhh crap. Two late entries. I was at the book store yesterday and ended up buying two more titles. Luckily they were used so I saved a bit of money but I will regardless be bringing them with me. This brings the total number of books being brought to 5. The two late entries are Stiff by Mary Roach and The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Although both are significantly thinner than the others I will still need to make room for them. (My below synopsis are short cause I must finish packing!)

Stiff – Ever since I’ve told people I’m reading this one they’ve told me how much they’ve enjoyed it. That’s a good sign. I’m also extremely interested to be reading this while traveling with a recently graduated med school student. That way I can ask him all the questions I want about gross anatomy and cadavers. Oh yeah, I think that’s what this book is all about. Should be incredibly interesting.

The Professor and the Madman – My aunt suggested I read this one, don’t remember the conversation that lead to it but that doesn’t matter. It looks pretty cool too! It’s all about the making of the Oxford Dictionary, hooray. Something which I frequently need seeing as my spelling abilities have dwindled as I’ve grown older. Womp.

And now… let’s move on to the section of this rogue post I will title “The Things I Will Carry” (I don’t want to bite off of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried too much).

I will now divulge to you my packing list, physically, mentally and emotionally for this trip.

Physically:
A bunch of crap that I don’t really care if I don’t bring back. Except for my camera and some of my dignity.

Mentally:
Preparedness for anything and everything. Like the capacity to say “no” to drugs. Yes, that was only inserted for my mothers benefit. Dad, I know you don’t really care. Hell, you only live once right? My willingness to pay bribes when in dire situations. My preparedness to run, run really f’ing fast when some one tries to throw me into a van. My ability to play James Bond and drive a car really fast in a get away situation, fire a gun at close range and jump from a crane to a tall building in a pinch.

Emotionally:
Yep, this is the toughest one. I will regrettably be bringing far too many emotions with me on this trip. With any luck I will be able to purge all of them, in other words expel all the bullshit from my life. Sure it may mean I come home and throw people out of my life but, in all honesty, some are just using and abusing me so screw it right (don’t worry, if you’re reading this you’re not one of them)? Man o man, that is so much easier said than done. Maybe the most I can hope for is to just try my best to forget about certain things while I’m gone. Hope that while I am “off the grid” the people who I am close to and or want to be closer to still will actually miss me and realize that maybe they need to re-evaluate some things. And if not, well, it will be my loss but there’s too. Here’s to happy endings! Oh, not those kind of happy endings.

Hope everyone has a great three weeks!