Travel Tips for Book Lovers – Don’t Get Caught Without a Great Book

We just returned from an awesome trip to India.

We were there to attend a family wedding (which was fabulous).

However, as is the case with international travel – we didn’t have always on internet access.

This truly helped me unplug completely from the outside world – which turned out to be a really good thing.

I found that myself and my kids ended up reading a ton of books in our downtime (before bed and on lazy afternoons).

Thankfully, I anticipated that this would be the case and prepared for it before we left.

This is what I did.

Tune Up the Kindle

For me, unplugging meant turning off the internet – but not giving up on electronic devices altogether.

I love reading on my Kindle Voyage. (It’s sort of like a Kindle Paperwhite but a bit less bulky and you can turn pages with either a swipe or a press on the side.) However, Amazon has discontinued this device.

The reason why I like these two models for reading, over the Kindle Fire tablets, is because the only thing you can do on them is read.

In contrast, the Fire tablets have all the apps, which normally could be a distraction for me.

For traveling, the Kindle is really an important device to take along. You can carry a huge library with you – without all the bulk of traditional paperback books.

So, before we left, I made sure to fully charge my Kindle.

Decide What You Want to Read

The next step was to figure out what I wanted to read while away and actually get those items on my device.

I have the wifi only model, so downloading new books once we left would be difficult.

My criteria for vacation reads is simple – I want easy, entertaining books that are not too deep.

Usually, I am reading a few pages here and there so the books should be easy to digest especially when you have a lot of distractions.

Personally, mystery and suspense is my favorite genre – and honestly, I like a good clean read.

So …

These are the books I chose to take along on the trip:

5 Great Vacation Reads

• The Cinderella Murder by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
• The Sleeping Beauty Killer by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
• All by Myself, Alone by Mary Higgins Clark
• The Letter by Kathryn Hughes
• Home by Harlan Coben

Notice a pattern here? Ok, I confess, I am a huge fan of Mary Higgins Clark.

Catch Up on Your Ebooks

If you are anything like me – you probably have a growing collection of Ebooks ensconced on your computer hard drive.

Did you know that you can actually send many of these documents to your Kindle so you can read them on the go?

This article and this article explain how you can send a PDF to a Kindle as well as other file types.

You can also use a USB cable to transfer documents directly from your computer to your Kindle – though you should search Amazon help topics for the instructions that are specific to your Kindle model.

So, think about this – if you are a customer of Ultimate Bundles and have purchased any of their bundles in the past you can use your vacation to dive into some of those resources.

Don’t Forget AudioBooks

Finally, it is probably worth your while to download a few audiobooks to enjoy during your trip.

Our flight to India was loooooong, to say the least.

Personally, I suffer from a little bit of motion sickness if I read too much in a moving vehicle, including an airplane.

So, I definitely wanted to take a few audiobooks along that I could listen to in flight.

Our local library participate with an audiobook service – so I downloaded two audiobooks to my iPhone to take along for the ride.

Here are the ones I chose:

• Killer by Johathan Kellerman
• Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham

Just remember …

Make sure you actually download the audiobooks onto your device. You will not be able to stream the content without internet access.

Should you use audiobooks from Amazon, make sure you download the content to the Kindle app on your smartphone, iPad, or Fire tablet, if that is what you are using.

Audiobooks don’t work on the Kindle Voyage or Paperwhite.

Headphones are Important Too

Just to make things a little more complicated – you will likely need a comfortable set of headphones for extended listening.

You could take along a pair of noise cancelling headphones like these for the best experience.

But I popped something similar to this set in my bag because they don’t take up too much space and are quite comfortable – but NOT noise canceling.

If you are using an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus make sure to include an adapter in your bag as well.

Who knew that vacation reading would take so much planning?

But trust me …

You Will Be Glad You Planned Ahead

With a fully charged Kindle that is loaded with some awesome vacation reading and a couple audiobooks on your phone you will be ready to kick back and relax.

Here is a quick packing list that may be helpful:

• Kindle Voyage or Paperwhite loaded with ebooks
• USB cable and charging brick for Kindle
• Smartphone loaded with downloaded audiobooks
• smartphone charging cable and charging brick
• comfortable headphones
• batteries for noise cancelling headphones
• iPhone 7 headphone adapter if needed

Optional:

• multi USB charging port instead of separate charging bricks (This is the one that I have and it is a rapid charger that is good international travel too – 110-220V)
• external charging battery / power bank (I have this one and it is designed to provide up to 7 full iPhone 6 charges)

Happy travels!