T A B L E_T A L K Europe in February? Mexico in November? Swap favorite off-season vacation destinations in Table Talk. R E C E N T L Y Italian affair By Laura Fraser The author finds a passionate healing on a post-breakup trip to Italy (12/02/97) White dreams By Mary Roach Why I was wandering around Antarctica with a white plastic garbage pail over my head (12/01/97) Discovering Petra By Maxine Rose Schur At dusk, after the tourists have left, Jordan's ancient ruin comes to splendid life (11/26/97) Marooned in Colorado By Sara Baird A type-A journalist is forced to unwind at an idyllic, isolated (accessible only by narrow-gauge railroad or helicopter) Colorado resort (11/25/97) Road Warrior Jerry Yang Yahoo's Jerry Yang shares travel secrets (11/24/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		A LITERATURE-STARVED SHOPKEEPER OFFERS A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PACKING FOR THE ROAD. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY LISA MICHAELS | Last spring, when setting out for two months in Turkey, my husband and I had no trouble making a quick selection of T-shirts and toiletries. But when it came to picking books, we paused, weighing each one, literally, in our hands. Packing reading material for a long vacation on the cheap is like packing for travel in a light aircraft: That dead weight will come to haunt you. My husband solves this problem by choosing thick volumes that promise weeks of reliable pleasure: "David Copperfield," say. I, on the other hand, want to bring a good helping of the smorgasbord I have back home, an array sufficient to give me the illusion of whimsy. I recognize that rueful expression my husband wears when we plan a weekend out of town and I rush around assembling a foot-high stack of books -- more printed matter than I could get through in a lazy week at home. Time after time, he's watched me lug most of it back unread. This time, I couldn't afford to overpack: Our trip was to be done without porters or rented cars. Whatever I chose, I would carry on my back. In the end, I set out for Istanbul with 10 pounds of books, among them Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi (I planned to visit the mystic's tomb); "Innocents Abroad"; Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections"; and a couple things that had been recommended to me -- Dale Peck's "The Law of Enclosures," "Out of Egypt" by André Aciman. This was a healthy stack, but by the time I reached southern Turkey a month later, I had finished them all. It was a relief, then, when I saw, in a seaport town on the Aegean, a sign that said, "Used Books, Libros." I followed the arrow down a cobbled street and came to a tiny bookshop, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. The stone floor sloped to one side and the walls were fixed with rickety shelves. No one was in attendance, only a cat carefully shredding a well-shredded chair, so I started browsing. The English-language titles were dust-smeared and covered one wall: Barbara Taylor Bradford novels, lots of Agatha Christie, a small section of out-of-date guidebooks -- "Europe on $5 a Day" -- made quaint by inflation. They were mostly standard fare, yet here and there were a few surprises: Isherwood's "Christopher and His Kind," "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was an alphabetized discard pile, a whole inventory delivered by vacationers. Each volume held the story of a person who had passed through the town: a social worker who devoured this Patricia Cornwell mystery in one of the cafes above the harbor, glad to have no responsibility for the plot; a man who read Lord Kinross' "The Ottoman Centuries" in a dingy pension near the market, the bed exhausted and he wide awake. For the most part these volumes told a tale of people bent on light reading -- mysteries and bodice-rippers and Louis L'Amour westerns. It's easy to feel scorn for such books -- their failure to drape anything artful over the bare machinery of their plots. But they bear you along and spit you out, and then -- here's the lovely thing -- you can throw them away. Like sample shampoo bottles or slips of hotel soap, they're perfect for traveling: You won't mind leaving them behind. That was the trouble with my plan -- trying to patch up the holes in my literary education while on holiday. I ended up with books I felt obliged to cart home again. N E X T+P A G E+| "It's all trash" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -