Beach or holiday books are marked by a relative slackening of standards, as people admit to their secret fondness for unitellectual reading
One of the more popular games literary-minded people play is a variation on Desert Island Discs, where you choose the books you would take to a desert island if you were allowed only six.
The needs of the modern tourist are not so extreme: in the age of GPS, the Internet and mobile phones, it is unlikely that even the most intrepid explorer will find himself stranded in the fashion of the archetypal desert island refugee.
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Even so, the plight of the traveller stranded without books is extreme. I planned my version of Desert Island Books carefully before leaving India for a fortnight in Malaysia. There was the kind of worthy history that I always plan to read and never get around to, there was the new Pico Iyer and the new William Boyd; there was an old, quaint; History of the Malay Peoples; and a couple of books on my to-do reading list.
Iyer