Help me pack books for my trip Down Under!

Wednesday afternoon, I’m getting on a plane for New Zealand.  I’ll be speaking at the Auckland Eucharistic Convention and doing a Theology on Tap in Sydney.

It’s a very long series of flights, plus my mom (who’s travelling with me) and I like to walk in parks and pause to read when we travel, so I could use some recommendations for what I take on my kindle.

Here’s what I’ve already got that I’m planning to read:

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (on loan from the library)
• Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky (the first section, for the book club)
• A Train of Powder by Rebecca West (from my list of books I want to read in 2015)
• The Scar by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

Here are some books I’ve been eyeing and am considering picking up:

• Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award by Peter Filichia
• The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir by Sarah Manguso
• Love and Freindship: And Other Youthful Writings by Jane Austen
• The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language by Rowan Williams
• Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality by Richard Beck

Send me your suggestions, but I’m particularly interested in books set in New Zealand or Australia, if you have any recommendations on that front!

(Yes, I have read Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country — but I might pick up the ebook and reread it)

Oooh, just snagged Wesley Hill’s Spiritual Friendship, so that’s definitely going on my plane reading list.  I love reading Spiritual Friendship (the blog), where Wesley and a number of other contributors write on ways to develop and support non-marital vocations of love.  A lot of their posts have changed the way I interact with my friends and the way I try to use my house in order to be more hospitable.

Speaking of books, I’m sending an email update on my book (Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Offer) and how its cover came to be this Wednesday, so sign up now if you want to get the details.  And if you pop on over to Amazon, you can finally look past the cover and read an excerpt.