‘Cheap compared with most holidays’: booking a vacation just to read

Making a reading list the focus of an entire holiday is a convenient way to spend your time off. And as people who’ve done it found – it can be life-changing

We’ve all stretched airline weight limits or our back’s carrying capacity by cramming books into a suitcase, only to return home without having opened a single volume. But books needn’t be sidenotes to a holiday. Make them the stars of your next break and you have an itinerary that’s weather-proof, flight-cancellation-free and Covid-safe to boot. Flex your library card or raid friends’ shelves, and your trip is budget-friendly too.

Consider the summer Jennifer Byrne spent in 19th-century Russia with the “expressionist, complex, psychological stories” of Fyodor Dostoevsky and “gentler novels” of Leo Tolstoy. “They were like mountains that you knew you’d one day have to climb,” says the former host of ABC TV’s The Book Club.