As a kid grow­ing up in Florida, the idea of a beach vaca­tion lost some of its entic­ing allure. It meant, heat, sand, salty stick­i­ness, and more often than not — sun­burns. So, the idea of a beach vaca­tion is still some­thing of a mys­tery to me. One thing I can eas­ily com­pre­hend is the idea of see­ing friends, fam­ily, and spend­ing some qual­ity time with myself and a good book.

A vaca­tion is some­thing I haven’t done in a while.

It was 2007, when I founded Man­a­Na­tion, it was around that time that I took my last real vaca­tion. Since then I’ve never had a proper vaca­tion. Run­ning a web­site, espe­cially as a largely one-man oper­a­tion, required sac­ri­fices. For four years that sac­ri­fice was sleep and the inabil­ity to fully unplug, ever. I always had to be con­nected and run­ning the web­site, or shut the site down for X days.

In 2009, Katie and I took a trip to Puerto Rico. Which we took because it con­ve­niently tied into the Pro Tour, dur­ing which I wrote, edited video, and spent some time with my wife. Not a real vacation.

We trav­eled to Seat­tle in March of 2010. I took a day to visit Wiz­ards, and we then spent a lot of time doing our own stuff and see­ing Seat­tle. But dur­ing that time I spent every night post­ing arti­cles and run­ning the site.

Up until Decem­ber of last year any trip we took required me to have inter­net access to run the web­site and be ready to respond to any news break­ing about Magic as well as pub­lish­ing and over­see­ing the site.

Now that I work for Wiz­ards itself, the emer­gency needs of the site are low, and I am able to take a vaca­tion. A real vacation.

Start­ing this Fri­day I’ll be leav­ing on our first trip back to Florida since we moved to Seat­tle in Decem­ber of last year. Dur­ing that time I’ll be endeav­or­ing to turn off my email noti­fi­ca­tions and gen­er­ally unplug.

After a won­der­ful dis­cus­sion on Face­book, I’ve built up quite the read­ing list for the trip. I’m cur­rently work­ing on Des­tiny of the Repub­lic by Can­dice Mil­lard, but once that is done I’ll be div­ing into some of these books:

Steven Say­lor’s Roma Sub Rosa series — Fol­low­ing Gor­dianus the Finder, this his­tor­i­cal fic­tion in ancient Rome is a series I’ve par­tially read over the years, and I hope to explore some more of these books. I love ancient Rome and love being trans­ported to that time in Saylor’s books.

Jim Butcher’s Dres­den Files — These are a series of books I never really got into, fol­low­ing a witch detec­tive in the mod­ern day. I watched the SciFi TV series but haven’t yet dove into the books. Hope­fully I’ll take to them as I expect.

Stephen R. Law­head’s King Raven tril­ogy. Sug­gested to me by my friend Stephen, it sounds like it is a more his­toric, his­toric fic­tion of Robin Hood. So hope­fully I’ll enjoy that series as well.

Don Winslow’s Sav­ages and the new pre­quel Kings of Cool are both on my read­ing list. I haven’t read either of these books so I’m look­ing for­ward to div­ing into them.

David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s Infi­nite Jest, a book that’s been on my read­ing list for a while but some­thing I just hadn’t dove into. To call a pop­u­lar meme to mind, “One does not sim­ply read David Fos­ter Wallace!”

Addi­tion­ally on the list are books from Jasper Fforde, Cory Doc­torow, Iain M. Banks, and more.

Now it’s impor­tant to real­ize I don’t expect to get through all of these books. I do expect to have a hand­ful of starts and stops and most likely books which don’t strike my fancy, so I will be able to try and explore new options.

As for the non­fic­tion books I’ll be read­ing, the list is a bit shorter.

George Dyson’s Tur­ing Cathe­dral is a book I’m super intim­i­dated but also super excited to get into. This one could very well swal­low me whole and chew me up over the course of the vacation.

Willpower by Roy Baumeis­ter is a book about willpower and how to recap­ture it. I expect it to be inter­est­ing and infor­ma­tional if not some­what info-tainment, we’ll see!

A Major­ity of Scoundrels by Don Berry exam­ines the his­tory of America’s fur trade in the country’s for­ma­tive years.

And that’s it. Holy crap I’ve got a lot of read­ing ahead of me. Thank good­ness for my Nook and the won­ders of ebook technology.