Reading Material

Mad Dog is having a rematch with James Joyce in the next month.

Ohara has asked me what I'm going to read on my imminent Grecian vacation. This is a good question. One of the delights in my adult years has been selecting a number of books to consume on holiday. My life being what it is these days, this is the only time I get to do any serious reading. So here's my selection:

1) Ulysses
James Joyce
Joyce, you bastard, you won't defeat me this time.

2) Journal of a Plague Year
Daniel Defoe
What else for a microbiologist?

3) Cracking the Emperor's Codes
Michael Smith
I love this nerdy, military code cracking stuff.

4) McCarthy's Bar
Pete McCarthy
Apparently hilarious Irish travelogue -I'm intensely curious about my parents' country.

5) Blindness
José Saramago
I've got to have one serious offering from a Nobel Laureate.

6) The 4 Hour Work Week
Timothy Ferriss
Retirement planning of sorts; shameless NY Times best seller pulp filler.

So that's my top six. A mix of fiction and non-fiction, humour and gravity, intellectually challenging (not difficult these days) and lightweight as well as another epic battle with Ulysses (what better place than Greece for this?). And absolutely no bloody Dan Brown or JK Rowling.

PS Yesterday a friend loaned me Issai Chozanshi's classic The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts. I'll try to sneak that one in too.