The Book Nerd’s Guide to Spring Break

Welcome to the Book Nerd’s Guide to Life! Every other week, we convene in this safe place to discuss the unique challenges of life for people whose noses are always wedged in books. For past guides, click here.
Personally, I’ve never been much of a spring break person. Sure, a week’s vacation is great—at any time of the year. But spring break , as it has been billed, manifests as many of the things I hate in this world: big crowds, the sun, various forms of cheap vodka, bikinis, delinquent youths.
But, as with most things, now that I no longer get a spring break , I covet it something awful. The idea of doffing a perfectly enormous sun hat to a horde of inebriated college students as I stay secure in the shady sanctuary of a poolside cabana appeals to me, as is my right as someone who owns sundry nonfiction works about the Romanovs.
For those of you who do intend to indulge, however, let me outline in great detail what I think the perfect spring break would be, for those of the book nerd persuasion.
Location, location, location
If I’m going to endure the rigors of this nation’s airports, I need a destination worth the effort, something appropriately scenic but with a character that will promote my true aim: working through my to-read stack. Somewhere like Key West would do. I could plow through Where’d You Go, Bernadette while heaps of six-toed cats slunk between my feet, which is exactly how I think Hemingway would have wanted it. (Yes, I haven’t yet gotten to Where’d You Go, Bernadette. I understand the depths of my depravity.)
‘Drink Me’
If I’m going to embrace the fresh emotion of Lincoln in the Bardo (“Pietà meets Lincoln Memorial,” by its author’s description), you can bet I’ll need a good glass of wine, or as I like to call it, Mama’s Little Fizzy Lifting Drink. I mean, cabernet sauvignon is no keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but I find it settles the mind more for lengthy reading stretches. And it’s difficult to turn the pages when you’re doing a keg stand—I guess the kids must be big into audiobooks.
An Inkling
Now, after all the wine and reading and cats and wine, there’s one more spring break tradition to consider: the ill-advised tattoo. Look, there’s no law that says what you ink on yourself after an all-nighter has to be a rose or a butterfly or a tribal band. If you’re going to make a difficult-to-reverse decision, it should be one that aligns with your interests. If not now, when will you ever get the lower-back “So it goes” tattoo you’ve just now started to consider? When else will you ever take the leap and get a portrait of Maya Angelou emblazoned along your rib cage?
Maybe all of this is a regular Tuesday to you. Maybe I lead a dull and boring life. But to me, a book nerd’s spring break is the time for taking chances. But not too many chances; I’d pack eight paperbacks in case one is damaged or lost, and two in my purse in case my luggage is somehow jettisoned from the plane. You can never be too careful, particularly when you’re watching your tattoo artist transcribe the full text of “The Jabberwocky” down your torso.