I’ve been doing quite a bit of local travel recently. Two weeks ago, we were soaking up coastal sunsets; this weekend, we headed inland for a few days in Tahoe. (California is a truly incredible state – in the coldest months of the year we can enjoy sea and snow in a matter of miles.)

This trip is an annual tradition to celebrate a dear friend’s birthday, and we actively plan our February around it. Like all good traditions, it’s evolved over the years. When we started, the trip was mainly skiers, with just Mr. Owlet and I staying in our cabin to cook, read, and laze around. As we’ve added friends (and upped the ratio of non-skiers), we’ve spent more of our time doing various friend-shaped activities – cooking together, playing games, neighborhood walks in the snow.

Reading, interrupted

On balance, this is wonderful. It is no small thing to have a community to travel and grow with, and I don’t take that lightly.

However… All this concentrated community comes at the cost of reading time. Specifically, reading time in my favorite sunny spot right by the window with a gorgeous view of snowy pines and bright blue skies, also known as the coziest reading spot to ever exist. And this, in turn, has impacted how I select books for these little trips.

When we first started our annual adventure, I’d pack a whole bag of books, and work through every one. I looked forward to a day or two spent reading in the sunlight, my evenings debriefing the day’s ski adventures. But as social time started to eat into reading time, I found my bag shrinking, and my selection process getting more stressful. Somehow, picking a book I didn’t read on the trip felt like failing my future self. But something clicked recently… And I’ve found myself enjoying pulling together a whole pile of books to bring to the cabin, even if I only read a few.

Tsundoku, or hope in book form

Let’s take a second to appreciate tsundoku as a general concept. For those who have yet to encounter it, tsundoku is the act of acquiring books and allowing them to accumulate. It’s a neutral term, and often associated with the aspiration of future reading. When used as a noun, it’s denotatively similar to a TBR pile; but connotative, it doesn’t carry the same feeling of a task or a to-do list.

I’m an active appreciator of tsundoku in my daily life. When I find a book which excites me, I happily acquire it and stash it on a shelf. (To Mr. Owlet’s chagrin, as my designated “to read soon! I swear!” shelf is currently overflowing…) Books can take months to get off the shelf, until I find just the right moment for them. (Three Bags Full is a great example of a book that needed just such serendipity to eventually end up read.) Looking at this shelf brings me immense joy – how fortunate I feel, to have a curated pile of intriguing, engaging adventures!

But until last year, I’ve not been able to bring that energy to my travel reads. I lead a pretty busy life, and every trip felt like a way to make up for lost reading time. I’d stuff my bag full of books, throwing in an aspirational “good for you” book. While I’d often read the “special trip read” set in my travel destination, other books took a backseat to whatever cozy read I’d saved on my Kindle. And this left me feeling disappointed in my own reading mettle. If I couldn’t even get through the “right” books on vacation, could I call myself a real reader?

From TBR to-dos to curated moods

Recently, however, I’ve been treating book selection for trips less like a to-do list and more like a playlist. Instead of optimizing for my ability to read the “hard books”, I’ll pick out books to read based on the vibes I might want to create on the trip. Cozy cabin vibes? Throw in a cozy fantasy or mystery read. Dark winter nights by the fire? How about an academic, genre-bending historical mystery or a will-induced scavenger hunt? What about if I’m feeling social and chatty but also a little overwhelmed by people? A fabulous epistolary journal set in Victorian London following a snarky debutante, of course.

This approach has worked wonders, bringing the tsundoku feeling back to my travel pile. As I curate my selection, I get to anticipate how I might want to feel while reading. And when I return books to my shelf, it’s simply a function of the vibes I chose to lean into on this trip. The returned books remain available for another weekend or another trip, ready to drop me into the perfect world and mood.

There’s another benefit to this approach (which really stood out this weekend). Picking books based on trip vibes makes them a lot easier and more fun to share other people on the same trip. I ended up talking books with one of our hosts and was happily able to pull out several recommendations from my reading pile to share with her. It turns out that sharing the travel experience also means you’re more likely to pass along reading vibes… and it’s such a lovely feeling to hand over a physical book to share with someone as you describe why you’re excited about it.

Leaving ready for more

For those curious, I ended up going for the journals, which you can expect to feature in a post soon… Their chatty slice-of-life vibe perfectly mirrored my social cabin setting. And they’re quite short individually, which made it easy to sneak in reading sessions between social encounters.

Thus, I have returned from my weekend travels satisfied with both my reading selection and my social time. Which means, we can go back to more typical reading content soon – just in time for a nice long weekend and a quite Romantic one.

Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!