How I Choose Books While Traveling

And books that choose me

One of the many things I love about books is the way they can connect you to a specific time and place. Not only the fictional location and space, but certain books can tether you to the experience you had when buying or first reading that book. My most treasured titles are connected with a memory of where I bought them.

For that reason, and because I love sight-seeing bookshops wherever I go, I allow myself to buy 1–2 new books for each trip. I have a few personal rules when it comes to this. I want my choice to be thoughtful and not simply something that sounds interesting (though that’s certainly a criterion).

1. The book has to be from a local bookshop. I like to support the local economy, and I rarely buy touristy items (re: nothing that will end up in a junk drawer). Books are the ultimate souvenir for me, and the experience of a local bookshop offers a memory to take home in itself.
2. The story has to be at least somewhat connected to the place where it was purchased. For New Orleans, I bought New Orleans Noir, an anthology of short stories based in NOLA, as well as 1 Dead in Attic, a journalistic memoir of the Katrina aftermath. Or, the book could be loosely connected, like the second time I went and I bought Homegoing, a generational epic that spends part of the narrative in the black south. Since NOLA is part of the black south, I allowed myself to buy this gem that I’d already been wanting to read.

With that in mind, I’ve gotten several books with rich connections of place. In New York, at one of my favorite book havens, The Strand, I found The Selfishness of Others. It felt like a very NY-centric thing: Being lost in a crowd makes you feel uncentered from yourself. Another was a small book called In The Cafe of Lost Youth, a book located in Paris with a mysterious young woman who joined a cafe literary group and eventually vanishes. This book called to me because I felt spiritually close to Paris in NY (if not only in memories of connecting flights).

See? Loose connections, but also a strong sense that place is related to the book.

When I went to Big Bend National Park this week, I had a few ideas in mind before I got there. I was eager to find something relating to the border, Mexican stories, stories of immigrants, etc. One book I had on my mind was The Devil’s Highway, which I’d heard great things about. This seemed like the perfect place to give it a shot.

But what happens when that perfect book won’t appear? It seemed everywhere we went was an abundance of books. All were great finds, most secondhand, and I soon was finding too many books off my TBR.

I’ll back up for a second. If something is on my TBR, I am likely to go ahead and buy if I find it secondhand. It’s like a treasure-hunting game. That’s how I manage my book-buying: Be patient. The book will find its way to you.

But too many books were finding their way to me at good prices. I know – this is really your problem, Nova? Too many great, affordable books?

My short answer is yes. As I found, considered, and struggled to keep from buying an insane amount of used books, my anxiety dogged me to make a good decision. Find the perfect books, like you did in NOLA. Like you did in NY. I didn’t want these finds to not be special if so many came from the same place.

Though my decision was fraught with self-doubt, after much hemming and hawing, I bought these:

1. Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
2. Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Death in the Andes is set in Peru: Not at all close to the Big Bend area, but as close as I’d ever been to South America, and certainly a crossing of Latino culture. And I’m excited to read both of these books.

But also, after four thrift shops, I also came away with too many bargain finds, hot off my TBR, but unrelated to this specific place:

1. You Never Forget Your First by Alexis Coe

2. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

3. Fernhurst, Q.E.D. and Other Writings by Gertrude Stein

4. There, There by Tommy Orange

5. The Matrix and Philosophy

6. Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong

And then there was the box of free ARCs, from which I procured these:

1. Morningside Heights by Joshua Henkin
2. Let’s Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale
3. Tante Eva by Paula Bomer

So here I sit, a stack of 11 books sitting on my desk, multicolored spines begging me for attention, perhaps competing with last month’s stack of 10 books that I happened upon at garage sales. But that’s a whole other story, and I’ve got a lot to read.

Maybe I won’t commit all of these books to a special memory, but these books found me. I won’t soon forget the literary treasure trove I found in a little desert town.