Reading at sea

I arrived back home on Monday after just over a week on my very first cruise. My sister and I took a cruise from Seattle up the Canadian and Alaskan coasts and, after all of the running around and time zone changes, I needed some time to get settled back into my routines. Posting has been nonexistent this week since I ran out of scheduled posts and just haven’t had time to get caught up on reviewing the books I read while I was gone.

In the meantime, let me tell you about how I spent my unscheduled time aboard ship. Those who’ve been on cruises before are probably laughing at me—or soon will be. As a newbie, I had no idea how hard it would be to find a quiet place to read. I should’ve realized that the cruise company would have all kinds of entertainment to keep the thousands of guests occupied between ports. I didn’t partake because, for me, a stack of ebooks on my kindle is much more my speed than most of what was on offer. Oh I had a blast on the excursions my sister and I signed up for and the food was amazing and I would definitely do this again…but a bookish (and introverted) person needs a few hours here and there where she doesn’t have to deal with everyone without having to retreat to her cabin.

Thankfully, I found a few spaces! My favorite (if chilliest) was the aft deck where I took the above picture. I could take my book and a plate of food out there and set up camp for a bit. I’d read, then glance over the railing to drink in the astoundingly beautiful scenery across the water. I didn’t know how steep and rocky the Alaskan coast was. Towns are few and far between because there’s just no place for them to get a toe hold without literal tons of dynamite. The coastal mountains were covered with endless conifers and aspens and other trees that can brave the cold and wet. Some of these were tall enough to reach above the treeline and have a bit of snow still at their peaks.

My next favorite spot was a lounge that took my fellow passengers a few days to discover. I could read here out of the wind and watch the ship’s wake or gaze out over the water, looking for whale spouts and tails. (We saw four whales but weren’t fast enough to get pictures. We know what we saw!) My kindle’s screen kept going to sleep on me while I looked out the windows. My third favorite spot was the ship’s library. This one takes third place because a) I kept getting asked questions like I was in charge of the collection and b) said collection was so jumbled that I had to fight the urge to open all the glass-doored cabinets and alphabetize the books. The two other librarians I met there (we really can find our people, can’t we?) confessed that they had the same response to the poorly categorized shelves. The books remain unalphabetized because, well, I am on vacation. Still, I enjoyed seeing folks come in—other vacationing librarians, bookish teenagers who escaped from their families, etc.—and leave with a book or two.

I finished three books and started a fourth while I was at sea and new reviews will start appearing next Tuesday, per usual.