Reading in a Car Rental

Today we bring you the what, where, and how of reading as you ride around in a car rental.  Now, while it may be tempting to sneak in a few sentences during traffic, we strongly discourage any drivers from reading; enjoying a good book, ebook, magazine, or anything else that takes your eyes off the road is for passengers in the car rental only.  If that happens to be you:

What Will You Read?

Though it often happens that I pick up paperbacks throughout the season with no time to read, aspiring to read them all on vacation, my best advice for even the most avid reader is to limit yourself to just one book from home.   Who wants to come back from vacation with a stack of books they never got around to reading?  Plus, I find there is always interesting reading material that snag my interest along the way.  What should that one book be?  Check out The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow wants to tell you It's All Good, or tickle your brain with some Halo SciFi.  If none of those appeal to you there are tons of other [new releases on Barns 

Paper or Electronic?

Will you hold the physical copy of the book in your hands, or will you go for the electronic version?  I typically have a good mix of both, and if you have an ebook reading device you also have the option of downloading more books wherever you can get a wifi signal, even when there are no bookstores anywhere near your route by car rental.  Which ebook reader should you get?  Apple offers the ibooks app for iphone and ipad, and just about all other smart phones have some sort of book reader now.  I find reading on my iphone to be difficult, slow, and burn through my battery life.  If you're looking to buy a special device specifically for reading and storing books save your time from reading hundreds of reviews and check out the 'Comparison of e-book readers' chart from Wikipedia.

Coping With Motion

I used to have to spend all car rides, no matter how long or boring, looking out the window for fear of motion sickness.  Since then I've learned a couple tricks that allow me to read on the road in a car rental.  The first trick is to look up.  Every paragraph, every page, every two pages; whatever works for you.  Look up, look around, then back at your book.  The second is to chew something.  Chewing helps keep inner-ear equilibrium while the car rental is moving.  My favorite thing to chew on in a car is ginger candy, which also helps calm an upset stomach, but you can also chew gum.