How do you prepare for a Reading Staycation? Well pretty much like a regular vacation.

First decide where you want to go.

Your choices:
1. You can stay home.(The least expensive.)
2. You can go to a nearby hotel or B&B.
3. You can travel to an exotic location, hang your hammock and bring your books.

For any of these you need to do the following:

1. Set a start and end vacation date and time. Book your lodging. Even if you are staying home - this is your vacation. Not to be interrupted unless by dire emergency. Tell everyone you are going out of town - so they don't drop by.

2. Suspend the mail and newspapers.

3. Turn off (and tape over the on/off buttons of TV, video games, cell phones, and computers).

4. Pack your bags - you think I'm kidding? Act like this is your vacation - limit your clothing, don't eat from the frig, draw some "mad money" out of the bank for eating out and "souvenir" shopping.

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
8. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
9. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
10. Ulysses by James Joyce
11. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
12. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
13. Animal Farm by George Orwell
14. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
15. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
16. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
17. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
19. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
20. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
21. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
22. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
23. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
24. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
25. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
26. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
27. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
28. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
29. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
30. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
31. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
32. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
33. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
35. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
36. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
37. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
39. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
40. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
41. The Stranger by Albert Camus
42. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
43. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
44. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
45. The Stand by Stephen King
46. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
47. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
48. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
49. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
50. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
51. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
52. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
53. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
54. Watership Down by Richard Adams
55. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
56. Dracula by Bram Stoker
57. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
58. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
59. Dune by Frank Herbert
60. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
61. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
62. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
63. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
64. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
65. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
66. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
67. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
68. Middlemarch by George Eliot
69. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
70. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
71. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
72. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
73. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
74. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
75. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
76. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
77. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
78. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
79. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
80. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
81. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
82. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
83. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
84. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
85. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
86. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
87. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
88. Persuasion by Jane Austen
89. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
90. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
91. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
92. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
93. Beloved by Toni Morrison
94. Light in August by William Faulkner
95. The Trial by Franz Kafka
96. Atonement by Ian McEwan
97. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
98. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
99. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
100. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

1. The Second World War, Winston S. Churchill
Brookhiser: "The big story of the century, told by its major hero."

# Vol. 1, The Gathering Storm
# Vol. 2, Their Finest Hour
# Vol. 3, The Grand Alliance
# Vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate
# Vol. 5, Closing the Ring
# Vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy

2. The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Neuhaus: "Marked the absolute final turning point beyond which nobody could deny the evil of the Evil Empire."

3. Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
Herman: "Orwell's masterpiece-far superior to Animal Farm and 1984. No education in the meaning of the 20th century is complete without it."

4. The Road to Serfdom, F. A. von Hayek
Helprin: "Shatters the myth that the totalitarianisms 'of the Left' and 'of the Right' stem from differing impulses."

5. Collected Essays, George Orwell
King: "Every conservative's favorite liberal and every liberal's favorite conservative. This book has no enemies."

6. The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper
Herman: "The best work on political philosophy in the 20th century. Exposes totalitarianism's roots in Plato, Hegel, and Marx."

7. The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis
Brookhiser: "How modern philosophies drain meaning and the sacred from our lives."

8. Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset
Gilder: "Prophesied the 20th century's debauchery of democracy and science, the barbarism of the specialist, and the inevitable fatuity of public opinion. Explained the genius of capitalist elites."

9. The Constitution of Liberty, F. A. von Hayek
O'Sullivan: "A great re-statement for this century of classical liberalism by its greatest modern exponent."

10. Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman

11. Modern Times, Paul Johnson
Herman: "Huge impact outside the academy, dreaded and ignored inside it."

12. Rationalism in Politics, Michael Oakeshott
Herman: "Oakeshott is the 20th century's Edmund Burke."

13. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter
Caldwell: "Locus classicus for the observation that democratic capitalism undermines itself through its very success."

14. Economy and Society, Max Weber
Lind: "Weber made permanent contributions to the understanding of society with his discussions of comparative religion, bureaucracy, charisma, and the distinctions among status, class, and party."

15. The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt
Caldwell: "Through Nazism and Stalinism, looks at almost every pernicious trend in the last century's politics with stunning subtlety."

16. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West
Kelly: "For its writing, not for its historical accuracy."

17. Sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson
Lind: "Darwin put humanity in its proper place in the animal kingdom. Wilson put human society there, too."

18. Centissimus Annus, Pope John Paul II

19. The Pursuit of the Millennium, Norman Cohn
Neuhaus: "The authoritative refutation of utopianism of the left, right, and points undetermined."

20. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Helprin: "An innocent's account of the greatest evil imaginable. The most powerful book of the century. Others may not agree. No matter, I cast my lot with this child."
Caldwell: "If one didn't know her fate, one might read it as the reflections of any girl. That one does know her fate makes this as close to a holy book as the century produced."

21. The Great Terror, Robert Conquest
Herman: "Documented for the first time the real record of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. A genuine monument of historical research and reconstruction, a true epic of evil."

22. Chronicles of Wasted Time, Malcolm Muggeridge
Gilder: "The best autobiography, Christian confession, and historic meditation of the century."

23. Relativity, Albert Einstein
Lind: "The most important physicist since Newton."

24. Witness, Whittaker Chambers
Caldwell: "Confession, history, potboiler-by a man who writes like the literary giant we would know him as, had not Communism got him first."

25. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn

26. Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Neuhaus: "The most influential book of the most influential Christian apologist of the century."

27. The Quest for Community, Robert Nisbet

28. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.
Helprin: "The infinite riches of the world, presented with elegance, confidence, and economy."

29. Up in the Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell

30. The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton
Lukacs: "A great carillonade of Christian verities."

31. Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
O'Sullivan: "How to look at the Christian tradition with fresh eyes."

32. The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling
Hart: "The popular form of liberalism tends to simplify and caricature when it attempts moral aspiration-that is, it tends to 'Stalinism.'"

33. The Double Helix, James D. Watson
Herman: "Deeply hated by feminists because Watson dares to suggest that the male-female distinction originated in nature, in the DNA code itself."

34. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Richard Phillips Feynman
Gelernter: "Outside of art (or maybe not), physics is mankind's most beautiful achievement; these three volumes are probably the most beautiful ever written about physics."

35. Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, Tom Wolfe
O'Sullivan: "Wolfe is our Juvenal."

36. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Albert Camus

37. The Unheavenly City, Edward C. Banfield
Neuhaus: "The volume that began the debunking of New Deal socialism and its public-policy consequences."

38. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud

39. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs

40. The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama

41. Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker

42. The Age of Reform, Richard Hofstadter
Herman: "The single best book on American history in this century, bar none."

43. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes
Hart: "Influential in suggesting that the business cycle can be modified by government investment and manipulation of tax rates."

44. God & Man at Yale, William F. Buckley Jr.
Gilder: "Still correct and prophetic. It defines the conservative revolt against socialism and atheism on campus and in the culture, and reconciles the alleged conflict between capitalist and religious conservatives."

45. Selected Essays, T. S. Eliot
Hart: "Shaped the literary taste of the mid-century."

46. Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver

47. The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs

48. The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom

49. Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell

50. An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal

# An American Dilemma, Vol. 1
# An American Dilemma, Vol. 2

51. Three Case Histories, Sigmund Freud
Gelernter: "Beyond question Freud is history's most important philosopher of the mind, and he ranks alongside Eliot as the century's greatest literary critic. Modern intellectual life (left, right, and in-between) would be unthinkable without him."

52. The Struggle for Europe, Chester Wilmot

53. Main Currents in American Thought, Vernon Louis Parrington
King: "An immensely readable history of ideas and men. (Skip the fragmentary third volume-he died before finishing it.)"

54. The Waning of the Middle Ages, Johann Huzinga
Lukacs: "Probably the finest historian who lived in this century. "

55. Systematic Theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg
Neuhaus: "The best summary and reflection on Christianity's encounter with the Enlightenment project."

# Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
# Systematic Theology, Vol. 2
# Systematic Theology, Vol. 3

56. The Campaign of the Marne, Sewell Tyng
Keegan: "A forgotten American's masterly account of the First World War in the West."

57. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hart: "A terse summation of the analytic method of the analytic school in philosophy, and a heroic leap beyond it."

58. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Bernard Lonergan
Glendon: "The Thomas Aquinas of the 20th century."

59. Being and Time, Martin Heidegger
Hart: "A seminal thinker, notwithstanding his disgraceful error of equating National Socialism with the experience of 'Being.'"

60. Disraeli, Robert Blake
Keegan: "Political biography as it should be written."

61. Democracy and Leadership, Irving Babbitt
King: "A conservative literary critic describes what happens when humanitarianism over takes humanism."

62. The Elements of Style, William Strunk & E. B. White
A. Thernstrom: "If only every writer would remember just one of Strunk & White's wonderful injunctions: 'Omit needless words.' Omit needless words."

63. The Machiavellians, James Burnham
O'Sullivan: "Burnham is the greatest political analyst of our century and this is his best book."

64. Reflections of a Russian Statesman, Konstantin P. Pobedonostsev
King: "The 'culture war' as seen by the tutor to the last two czars. A Russian Pat Buchanan."

65. The Hedgehog and the Fox, Isaiah Berlin

66. Roll, Jordan, Roll, Eugene D. Genovese
Neuhaus: "The best account of American slavery and the moral and cultural forces that undid it."

67. The ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound
Brookhiser: "An epitome of the aging aesthetic movement that will be forever known as modernism."

68. The Second World War, John Keegan
Hart: "A masterly history in a single volume."

69. The Making of Homeric Verse, Milman Parry
Lind: "Genuine discoveries in literary study are rare. Parry's discovery of the oral formulaic basis of the Homeric epics, the founding texts of Western literature, was one of them."

70. The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling, Angus Wilson
Keegan: "A life of a great author told through the transmutation of his experience into fictional form."

71. Scrutiny, F. R. Leavis
Hart: "Enormously important in education, especially in England. Leavis understood what one kind of 'living English' is."

72. The Edge of the Sword, Charles de Gaulle
Brookhiser: "A lesser figure than Churchill, but more philosophical (and hence, more problematic)."

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Camel library update, May 11, 2008

Fifteen months after it began, efforts from individuals, authors, book festivals, libraries, bookstores and book clubs to contribute to the camel library have been enormously successful. Books have poured into this corner of northern Kenya, and will bolster education and literacy efforts for many years to come.

Read more about it here...CAMEL BOOK DRIVE