Travelin Books

The was a wonderful documentary that i really loved called Traveling Birds.It tracked the migratory paths of a number of long haul feather flyers around the globe. Using some very inventive camera techniques mounted on UltraLights, you literally climbed on board with them and flew over vast stretches of country and ocean. No mean feat navigating from breading grounds in the Arctic to your winter residence somewhere in Africa.
Now i think books do the same.When ever i am on the road i am always on the look out for books to read. I catch up as do many travelers on unread novels whilst on the move. As you move, so do the books you are hauling. And with the vast distances these days that travelers cover, books can clock up the miles in no time. If you fitted a gps chip in the cover of a classic novel that readers tend to re read , say Siddharta by Herman Hesse you could track its movements around the globe.
There is a sort of unwritten code of conduct with us travelin readers, ok maybe you buy your departure Airplane reading book from a bookshop before you leave home , you progressively read it on the road , but once you finish it , you quickly become aware of what i call Book to Back Pack Weight Ratio- B2BPW%. Now your beloved author, whom you have been so intimate with inside of his or her fabricated world becomes a weight liability. It might be just paper weight, but books are heavy critters especially when they are read. So what to do ? well meeting a fellow traveller you offer as a gift, or you find a second hand bookshop and do a trade, or you leave behind in your hotel room, a random act of reading kindness that you enact for the next occupant. With great delight I have done all three.
Travelin Books will get future posts for sure and there is a lot to recommend and discuss. This pic is of the interior of Mananas Cafe on Isla Mujeres , which has a sizable colony of resting books, probably the 2nd largest collection of novels after Alma Libre in Puerto Morelos. At Play in the Fields of the Lord by that remarkable American author Peter Matthiessen has hitched a ride with me this time, who knows where it will end up in the Caribbean, who knows where this novel has been so far ? I always look for any readers inscription or a stamp inside its pages , that might indicate a previous owners memo to him or her self or to the next reader. This book has done some miles by the look of it, published in 1965, it has a Los Arcos Reds English Library book stamp from Antigua inside its cover, so its been migrating around Central America probably for some time.
The other pleasure that always goes with reading in cafes at least for me, is a good short sharp shot of expresso, if Isla Mujeres is on your flight path be sure to go to Mananas and refuel there, get Karen to make it for you.