What shall I bring?

So, I'm getting ready to go on a long(ish) relaxing vacation; flight across the lower 48 from the East Coast to Seattle, then a cruise ship to Alaska for 7 days. A few days of bookending while we fly and kick around in Seattle, and it's going to be 11 days (really ten plus an evening) out. Of course, I'll be doing stuff, not just sitting around on a lounge chair on the boat for ten solid days, but I do anticipate having some time to read. Quite a bit of time, actually. What shall I bring?

My cruise ship. Maybe.

I'll want a few options, and I'll want several options, just in case I'm making better progress than I think. What I've already got in my backpack includes:

- Frostburn, the 3e era ice, snow and tundra environmental book. Given that I'm going to Alaska and will spend at least an hour or two on top of Mendenhall glacier riding a dog sled, that seemed appropriate. Stormwrack, the sea-faring environmental book would have been too. But realistically, I don't much like the environmental books; they feel more like reading textbooks than gamebooks that are interesting. I struggled a few months ago with Sandstorm. I want to get through both of those, but I don't anticipate that it'll be super thrilling to read either of them. 

- I threw the larger 3e era module Black Sails Over Freeport in the bag too. I don't remember thinking that this was the best of the big modules that I've read, but it's not the worst either. Its biggest problem, ironically, is the tongue-in-cheek gonzo lack of seriousness. Now, don't get me wrong; I don't think RPGs are serious business all the time or anything, but the original Freeport trilogy was, at least, kind of dark and played it straight. My memory of Black Sails is that it is a big slapstick satire of a pirate adventure, mostly. It's possible that I'm overplaying that angle in my memory and it's not that bad, but we'll see.

- I kind of think that I should throw at least one more gamebook in the bag, and given that I'm a bit wary based on my years-ago memories of reading the two that I have, I should probably get one that I either haven't read before, or that I anticipate actually quite liking a lot. Either that, or one that I can just pick up and sample a few pages of here and there as I feel like, like a monster book of some kind. I'm actually thinking of re-reading all six of the main hardback 3e monster books, Monster Manuals I-V and the Fiend Folio. Because I'll only skim or even skip much of the statblocks, not only will it be easily handled in small, easily digestible chunks that are much briefer than chapters, but I'll also tend to flip pages pretty quickly when I'm skipping (or skimming, more accurately) much of the code, which is a big chunk of the text. Plus, how long has it been since I've read the 3e Monster Manual? Twenty five years, probably; I think I read the original 3e one when it was new, and although I bought the 3.5 one while it was still in print, I don't think I've ever tried to sit down and read it. Come to think of it, I've never read any of the 3.5 core books. I read the 3e core books when they were new, and played with the SRD for the majority of the 3.5 game. I was always salty about having to rebuy the core books so soon after having already bought them, so I didn't. In fact, I only just bought used copies of the PHB and DMG in the last few months. So I'm leaning towards throwing the 3.5 MM in the bag. 

- Other physical gamebooks that are on my shortlist include Heroes of Horror, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss (the second one about hell is not on the shortlist, but it is on the longer list) Libris Mortis: The Book of the Undead, and Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons. All 3.5 era books, needless to say. I'd also like to read my omnibus Lulu.com copy of B/X and my 4e Basic Fantasy Roleplaying, but I those will be more like textbooks, I'm afraid. So anyway, I'm leaning towards MM, but I might change my mind at the last minute. Longer list includes re-reading the Expanded Psionics Handbook and some of the Complete books. I don't think I've ever read my copy of Complete Psionic which I'd had for twenty years. But again; that's for later; I'm not bringing those on the trip.

- I'm reading the Del Rey copy of Horror in the Museum and I'm only about halfway through (I just finished the titular story late last night, by funny coincidence. It's extremely unlikely, even if I really focus on it, that I'll finish that before I leave, unfortunately, although it's also extremely likely that I'll finish it before even getting on the boat. So I need at least one, and maybe a couple of additional fiction books to bring with me. I'll probably bring Ray Feist's Silverthorn, which I've been meaning to start for a while, and I'll probably finish it on the trip. Do I want another one? A Darkness at Sethanon is the obvious next one to read, but do I really want to read two books in the same series back to back without a break? Maybe. It'll be nice to have read them again after not doing it in several years, but I'm not quite sure where to go from there if I do. I also have a trilogy of Arkham Horror books out that I want to read and the Solomon Kane book by Del Rey. Maybe I'll pack both Solomon Kane and Silverthorn. 

- For non-fiction, I've still got the Flame Tree classic nice copy of the Greek mythology book in my bag. I'd like to finish that, but I don't need to pack another one. If I do finish it, though, I'll switch to Norse when I get back home, and Celtic (meaning really Irish, I believe, but we'll see) after that.

- I do have my phone, and I do have a Kindle app. Sometimes on vacation, that's what I use to read. I just read Seth Skorkowsky's Sea of Quills recently while flying on business travel, for instance. I didn't really start anything else yet. I do have an Eberron trilogy, the Heirs of Ash downloaded though (among a bazillion other things; but that's what I'd likely read next if I read on my phone) so that's three whole novels too. I've been wanting to reread Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood and Scaramouche as well as some Edgar Rice Burroughs and the "complete" H. P. Lovecraft, but everything I want to read, I have in hard physical copy, so I'll probably try to avoid reading those in ebook again.

- And, although I read pdfs on my desktop normally, which I'm obviously not taking with me, on a whim I downloaded the Carrion Crown adventures—all six of them—to my tablet. So I've got them to read too.

That's more than enough, even if I was literally just going on a "sit on a lounge chair and read for 14 hours a day" vacation, which I'm not. I mean, it's a cruise ship. I'll be eating for at least three hours a day, lol. I'm going with my wife. She'll want to spend time doing things together. We've got port calls and excursions. I may be lucky if, on average, I get even a couple of hours a day to sit and read. 

I also have my actual play podcasts (mentioned last post) that I'm listening to. The Hideous Laughter Carrion Crown podcast is, I think 250 or more episodes. I'm on episode 9, so I've got plenty more to listen to there too, if I want a different kind of reading. I'll probably report, just for my own benefit (I treat my blog more like a diary than an actual blog for public consumption) on how much I get done and what I've read and what I'm reading on the flipside.