July 3, 2024

Camping With Bright Creatures

My family worked really hard to buy me a book for my birthday that I would like, but hadn’t directly asked for. This process required looking up titles in line with my interests, and then examining our bookshelves to ensure I didn’t own it already, and then carefully studying my reading log to ensure I hadn’t read it in the last two years. A chancy endeavour, this was, but they were fairly confident. “Either you haven’t read it,” my husband told me, “or you just hated it so much that you eliminated any and all evidence of ever having come into contact with it.”

Fortunately, it was the former, but then everybody was quite nervous to find out if I would actually ENJOY the book, REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, by Shelby Van Pelt, a book that got lots of hype when it came out, but more on the periphery of my experience. This weekend, on our camping trip, I finally dove in….and I loved it so much. The kind of rich, absorbing reading experience I hope for when I’m on holiday. (My daughter said she was pretty sure I would like it because it sounded a bit like @amlaujo’s PEBBLE AND DOVE.)

And can I just take a moment to note how much the poor books we bring on camping trips have to go through? Look at that crumpled cover, not to mention bugs smushed between pages, the parts that end up waterlogged, the spills and dirt, and sand between the pages? Books on camping trips are some of the most hardworking, bedraggled books in the world.

Which is also to say that they are LOVED, and become irrevocable parts of the holiday memory, memories of reading as vivid and essential as those of the gorgeous sunsets, the indelible smell of campfire smoke, the sound of birdsong (very) early in the morning.