I originally started this hike with an e-reader packed in my bag. However, I hardly used it, as I found myself belonging to that class of hiker that tends to keep hiking until running out of daylight. So, I removed the e-reader when I added all my gear for the high sierras.
Naturally, with the longer daylight hours and elevation-enforced shorter daily mileages, I actually had a fair amount of down time during daylight hours in the mountains, which I filled looking over a California state map and those free tourist brochures available in motel displays. I can spend hours looking at maps and thinking about space and imagining journeys and destinations. (My world atlas was one of my belongings that merited being kept when departing India.).
Still, one can only spend so much time on California maps, so when I reached Mammoth Lakes, I decided to add weight in the form of a paperback to my kit. Over the last few weeks, I've been reading (mostly off the trail; weight remains key!). My focus has been fiction:
*Dead Until Dark - the first in the series of Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris that served as the source material for HBO's television series True Blood. I never saw the show. A mystery wrapped around vampires and relationships. I bought this at the Mammoth Lakes library's used book store, the Book Chalet, and left this at the Mammoth Motel 6. I haven't read or seen any of Twilight, but from what I know, there seem to be some parallels.
* Talking God - one of many of Tony Hillerman's mystery novels woven around daily life and culture of the Native American Navajos in the southwestern U.S. This was my trail book for the past 200 miles. In coming off the trail:
* Mr. Mercedes - Stephen King's 'hard-boiled' detective novel, free of the supernatural, but not the horrific.
* The Wishstones of Shannara - the second book in Terry Brooks' original Shannara trilogy, and the story of the group I remembered most enjoying. A 'quest' book involving journeying over long distances; hiking the PCT makes me think of quests.
* The Last Ship - William Brinkley's post-nuclear apocalypse tale of a lone Navy destroyer at sea. There's a TNT network television series based on this book, but from what I've read so far, and from what I've seen of the TV promos, the TV storyline is dramatically different from the book, which in many ways is an ode to the ocean and to naval crews. This book is physically too big for the trail, so completing this will have to wait.
For the trail:
* Siege of Darkness - in my bag, a one dollar purchase of a used R.A. Salvatore Dungeons and Dragons fantasy novel from the 90s.
* The Blessing Way - to be received up the trail, this is the first of Tony Hillerman's Navajo crime fiction novels.
* Blood Test - more mystery/crime fiction, my first dip into Jonathan Kellerman's work with an early story in his Alex Delaware series.
Naturally, with the longer daylight hours and elevation-enforced shorter daily mileages, I actually had a fair amount of down time during daylight hours in the mountains, which I filled looking over a California state map and those free tourist brochures available in motel displays. I can spend hours looking at maps and thinking about space and imagining journeys and destinations. (My world atlas was one of my belongings that merited being kept when departing India.).
Still, one can only spend so much time on California maps, so when I reached Mammoth Lakes, I decided to add weight in the form of a paperback to my kit. Over the last few weeks, I've been reading (mostly off the trail; weight remains key!). My focus has been fiction:
*Dead Until Dark - the first in the series of Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris that served as the source material for HBO's television series True Blood. I never saw the show. A mystery wrapped around vampires and relationships. I bought this at the Mammoth Lakes library's used book store, the Book Chalet, and left this at the Mammoth Motel 6. I haven't read or seen any of Twilight, but from what I know, there seem to be some parallels.
* Talking God - one of many of Tony Hillerman's mystery novels woven around daily life and culture of the Native American Navajos in the southwestern U.S. This was my trail book for the past 200 miles. In coming off the trail:
* Mr. Mercedes - Stephen King's 'hard-boiled' detective novel, free of the supernatural, but not the horrific.
* The Wishstones of Shannara - the second book in Terry Brooks' original Shannara trilogy, and the story of the group I remembered most enjoying. A 'quest' book involving journeying over long distances; hiking the PCT makes me think of quests.
* The Last Ship - William Brinkley's post-nuclear apocalypse tale of a lone Navy destroyer at sea. There's a TNT network television series based on this book, but from what I've read so far, and from what I've seen of the TV promos, the TV storyline is dramatically different from the book, which in many ways is an ode to the ocean and to naval crews. This book is physically too big for the trail, so completing this will have to wait.
For the trail:
* Siege of Darkness - in my bag, a one dollar purchase of a used R.A. Salvatore Dungeons and Dragons fantasy novel from the 90s.
* The Blessing Way - to be received up the trail, this is the first of Tony Hillerman's Navajo crime fiction novels.
* Blood Test - more mystery/crime fiction, my first dip into Jonathan Kellerman's work with an early story in his Alex Delaware series.
