In which an Onion travels north

Oh, holidays – aren’t they wonderful (especially when the rains seemed to have set in on poor Piglet back at the House).

And one of the best things about them is choosing books to take. Of course this is often a difficult business because, well frankly, I always want to take them all.

So the real pre-holiday question was, if I packed the new Phryne Fisher adventure, Murder on a Midsummer Night (Kerry Greenwood), and The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas) and Joel & Cat Set the Story Straight (Nick Earls & Rebecca Sparrow) and Finnikin of the Rock (Melina Marchetta) and Looking for Alaska (John Green) and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (Sherman Alexie), would I be able to breeze through airport check-in in a manner that suggested I was not weighed down by book-laden carry-on luggage? Hmm, I think not.

But never fear, there was a solution. Audio books to the rescue! Once transferred to an iPod, those audio books became very light indeed, and as the second leg of the journey was a very long road trip in the northerly direction, well, audio books rock.

Of course, they are not all audio books, and my reading eyes are bigger than my reading stomach, so I will not be able to finish all the books I packed, especially when there are distractions: But it’s lovely to have a choice.

So here's to lazy days of reading amid the swish of lush green leaves, and swimming in cool waterfall-fed waterholes, and dining with the scent of a sea-breeze, and afternoons that end with shadows cast long on a sweep of beach…and cartwheels at sunset; yes, let there be cartwheels.

Wish you were here.