This is the time of the year that we all have been waiting for in this hemisphere. Holidays! It's been way too hot in the past few days and we're all ready to just go away, leave behind us work, boss and responsibilities, and take a break. But the holidays are also this great time to catch up on all the reading we haven't done in the year.
I don't know about you, but I hate going on holidays and doing (really) nothing. I mean, don't get me wrong, I will take an hour or two just lying on the beach looking at the ocean, but more than that and I get bored. I would take my computer and surf the net to catch up on all the info I don't have time to read as I would like during the rest of the year, but it's too heavy, and it won't take the sand, and it's way too hot out there for my computer's fragile components. I do have my smartphone, but I'm going to France, and roaming is way too expensive to be surfing on my dataplan. Not to mention that with the reverberation on the beach, the screen is hard to read. So I'm stuck looking at the sea. As I said, nice for an hour or two, but after a while, simply boring. But this beach time really is the one time where reading something profound, or something mindless, makes the most sense. We need reading ideas.
What better choice than spending some time (in those empty summer hours where there is no work to do anyway ;-)) compiling a few Wikipedia articles into a book? You could do your own or browse our catalogue. My choice would be to take the whole of Star Wars on Wikipedia with me, because I've thought about (yet again) watching all the episodes. A little background would be good. I suppose some of you will prefer to take with you the book of Time, while others will fall for Hadronic Matter.
In short, before you go on holidays, take the time to compile your favorite subjects in a book that will fit in your bag, not mind the sun or the sand and not cost you an arm and a leg. You can start here, and if you haven't done it before, you might want to look at our video, which I embed here for your convenience.
Happy holidays, safe travels and great reads!
Wikipedia In Print - How to create custom books with a mix of content from the free encyclopedia
[image source: © Tim Bartel -Konzentration auf Strand, CC-BY-SA]
