The Christmas Holiday is drawing to a close… my next adventure will have me boarding the Viking Star in Fort Lauderdale in just 8 days! This time my husband Malcolm will be keeping the home fires burning while I travel with my dear friend Ann S. I’m chuckling as I write this thinking of a text she sent me last week:

I am so excited that I could almost pass out! What is this thing called Christmas that’s in the way?

So now Christmas is over and we are even closer to our big adventure!

Tonight I’m hoping for sweet dreams of gentle seas and fair winds!

About our beautiful ship…

We will be taking a Viking Ocean Cruise, boarding the Viking Star on January 4.

We set sail in 7 days!

Where are we going?

We have booked Viking Cruises Panama Canal & Central America Voyage. We will be exploring some of the Caribbean and making a partial transit of the Panama Canal. There will be a nice mix of sea days and port days.

When I travel I always try to curate my reading pile to enhance my adventure.

For this trip the word on all the travel boards and blogs was that you had to read David McCullough’s book, “The Path Between the Seas”. Many people refer to this book as a door stop… but I’ve seen some of the historical tomes my husband Malcolm reads… and this book is a manageable size in comparison.

A tip for reading books this size: get the “Audible” version and listen to the parts that bog you down. Listening to the entire book can get tedious as well. Especially since most of us can read faster than the book is can be read aloud. What I do is I read and when I get bogged down I listen for a while. When I find myself reading along faster than the narrator I shut of the narration and start reading again on my own. This is also a great tip for when your eyes need a rest. (As long as you are not cozy in bed and a little sleepy…) Another tip… if you find the reader a little to slowly paced for you, look for an option to “speed up” the sound track.

Another tip for travel reading is to check out the children’s non-fiction section of the library. People who write books for children have to be skilled at distilling information down to the most important concepts. They need to keep it simple. They often use charts and diagrams that can be really helpful. And they usually include some fun and quirky information to keep children entertained and interested. So you’ll see a couple of thin books in my pile, usually read by much younger people than myself.

I added “Canal Zone Daughter” by Judy Haisten to my reading pile because I wanted some more recent non fiction about the canal and I thought her first person telling of a childhood in the Canal Zone in the 60’s and 70’s would be interesting. It was and I enjoyed it. The book is less history more childhood reminiscing. Much of it reminded me of my own childhood in upstate New York, minus the palm trees and alligators. The end of the book does cover the turning over of the Canal Zone to Panama. It is a very one sided telling but a perspective that is not often covered in more traditional renditions.

There are two books in my pile I have not read yet:

-Silver People - Voices from the Panama Canal by Newbery Honor - winning author Margarita Engle looks interesting. It is considered a “Young Adult” book. \240Each chapter is a verse. And the verses are written from the point of view of various people, and creatures, along the canal. I think I can knock this one out on the plane and in the hotel before the cruise. But I might not rush through it. I might take my time and pick it up and put it down as the spirit moves me.

-Saffire - A Novel by Sigmund Brower appears to be a historical romance, a bit of a bodice ripper perhaps, set in 1909 in the American Zone of the Panama Canal. I’m planning on enjoying this by one of the Viking Star’s beautiful pools, probably with a piña colada by my side on one of our many sea days.

Do you curate your reading pile to your travel adventures? Let me know in the comments below!