Reading At Camp

Anyone who said we eat really well camping - I KNOW, right? The thing is, if you only have to do one meal, it's pretty easy to go all out. But this year wasn't even the most involved - many years there are immense joints of meat spit-roasted over the fire, and by some sorcery they are not burned on the outside and raw on the inside. 

Honestly, though, firepit pad Thai is hardly less impressive to me. The people that go grocery shopping in Picton the day of their meal and then come back and cook it - whoo. Once I am through the camp gates, I am At Camp. The thought of going into town and acting like a regular person who has recently bathed is beyond my imagination. 

READING AT CAMP because we are so intellectual.

Angus: The Midnight Line by Jack Reacher. After Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the Warriors books, there was a long reading drought for Angus. Then a few years ago I gave him a mystery for Christmas that he finished before the end of his holidays. Now he says he forgets for months at a time that he likes reading, but whenever he has an extended break or vacation he always reads. When I found out he liked the Jack Reacher series I bought him a couple of books. He finished this one at camp and finished the next one at home.

Vivian: In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune. I asked her if she'd read The House in the Cerulean Sea and she said yes and agreed it was charming and wholesome.

Janet: Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood. 

Dave: Three Axes to Fall by Sam Sykes. Third book in a series, and although I'm not hugely into epic fantasy, it looks kind of cool. 

Collette: Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper. I blogged about it here, and she asked if she could borrow it, and I said yes, but then she bought a copy because she wanted to support him, which was good because Eve had already stolen mine. 

Melanie: Dune. I have never. I will never. The original movie was tragic, the new movies are okay, thus is my assessment. 

Ben: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Second in a series. I have read some Dan Simmons - let me check - three or four novels and a book of novellas, but not this one. 

Logan: Midnight Tides by Steven Erickson. FIFTH in a TEN-VOLUME series. Dude's Canadian. Never heard of him. 

Me: Diavola by Jennifer Thorne. Oddly, I don't often read a whole lot at camp. My hands are so bad that it's hard for me to hold a book and I keep putting off buying a Kindle. A couple years ago I bought small camping stools so I can put my feet up and rest the book on my lap. I started reading this on the beach and then Monday morning it rained hard for about three hours and I finished it in the kitchen tent. It's by the author of Lute, which was one of my favourite books of 2023. It's maybe not quite as good, but it's very close. 

Matt: The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex by Murray Gell-Mann. There's a giant book sale at my Thursday school every year - like, really giant, and all the books are one or two dollars. I always go in to look for good books for the library and swear I won't buy any others, ha ha ha ha yeah right. I grabbed this one for Matt to look at because he's a physicist and it had 'quark' in the title. Turns out it's by a physicist he really likes, so that was an easy cheap win. 



Jordan: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. This was Jordan's first year camping with us and apparently that day on the beach I said "oh look, Jordan has a book!" in a way too excited register. I loved this book of short stories - Stories of Your Life was the story the movie Arrival was based on - linguistics, relationships with beings so utterly different from us, time and linearity and causality and different kinds of love. 

We call this one Last Man Reading - when they tear down your shelter around you and leave you and your book exposed to the elements.

Oh! I have one more. We are a well-read group from early on.