One of the most difficult preparations for a long journey is choosing the correct books to take along. It has to be something amazing that will hold my attention for a long time, and hopefully this amazing-ness will be balanced out by the book not being too heavy. But it has to be heavy enough not to be a half hour read, it needs to have a few hours of life in it, at least.
The first choice for this particular trip is performing very well indeed. I'm 200 pages in and loving it. It's Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked . Hornby has an amazing skill to juggle humor, deft characterization, deep insights into music and art and also a real understanding of how people act and why. It's been a really entertaining read so far.
Also, the cover is awesome. I was staring at it for quite a while before it suddenly hit me that it was more than just a set of ear buds.