Agonising Choices

If you’ve seen my Facebook page recently, you’ll know I’ve been reminiscing about my twentieth anniversary of going to teach in Botswana. I’ve been re-reading the diaries I wrote during my three years there, and one thing they’ve brought back is how little I was able to take with me—I had to pack everything into three boxes. Worst of all, I soon worked out I only had room for five books, once I’d packed the guide books and text books I needed. Being an avid reader, I obsessed over this far more than which clothes, shoes or household goods to take.

I was able to cheat a bit, because I had an old copy of the complete works of Jane Austen, printed on very thin paper, but it was still an agonising choice. I wanted a mixture of familiar books I enjoyed re-reading, and new books. Here’s what I ended up with:

• The Complete Works of Jane Austen - I’m sure I don’t have to explain why. They’re all like old friends to me.
  
• The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis - the first in the Falco series about a private informer in ancient Rome. This was another book I had read loads of times before. It’s both gripping and funny, and was one of the first books I’d read about ancient Rome whose characters who come across as real people rather than distant, heroic figures.
  
• Clear Waters Rising by Nicholas Crane - not a novel, but a travel book about the author’s epic walk across the mountain ranges of Europe, from Spain to Istanbul. I picked it out on a whim, because it struck me I was about to embark on an epic journey of my own, and I’m so glad I did. The author’s sense of adventure, combined with his struggles with homesickness and isolation from his family struck a chord with me, and helped me through my own homesickness. I read and re-read it until it fell apart.
  
• No Name by Wilkie Collins - another new book for me. I’d read and loved other Wilkie Collins books, so I chose this because it’s long, and I’m a fast reader! This is now my favourite Wilkie Collins book because it features one of my favourite heroines of all time, Magdalene Vanstone. When her parents die, a legal technicality makes her father’s will invalid, leaving her and her sister with nothing. Magdalene vows to win back her inheritance, and sets out in disguise to marry the (vile) man who inherited her father’s estate. Anyone who thinks Victorian heroines are weak and sickly sweet needs to read this.
  
• The Crow Road by Iain Banks - also a new book. I bought it because of the opening line: “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” Who could resist that? I’d never read any Iain Banks books before, but after reading the Crow Road multiple times, I begged my parents to post me more of his books, and they’ve all won a place on my “books I like to re-read” list.
  

How about you? If you were going away for three years and could only take five books, what would you choose?