Help!

It occurred to me earlier that, in one month’s time, I will be on a train from Zurich to Vienna. This, of course, will come immediately after being on a train from Paris to Zurich. The entire Paris-Vienna trek will take approximately 14 hours, and all but about 45 minutes of that period will be spent on one train or another. Then there are the seven-hour flights to and from London and the two-hour train rides to and from London.

There are only so many postcards a girl can write out (and when it comes to the flight to London, that number is zero), and so I need reading material. This is where you come in!

Jonathan and I roam through the Indigo at the Eaton Centre — and sometimes the nearby World’s Biggest Bookstore — on a weekly basis, so I have some idea of the current literary climate. The operative word in that last sentence is “some.”

The other thing, of course, is that unless the author’s name begins with “Agatha” and ends with “Christie,” I do not typically read fiction. I read history, political science, biographies, memoirs, social and cultural commentary, literary journalism, literary travel, career guides and novels wherein elderly women or eccentric Belgians go around solving murders, usually those of upper-class Brits. (Anna Karenina and The Master and Margarita are sitting, unread, on my bookshelf. But only because I feel obliged to read the classics despite just not being into fiction.)

As such, I need suggestions. What have you read?