I find it really helpful to take along a book where the character in the book is experiencing some really miserable weather conditions.  For example, mountain climbing books are great because the climber is suffering in the cold and the rain, etc.  It makes bad weather conditions on a canoe trip not seem so bad.

Mostly I read the same book, Hugh Fosburgh's "The Sound of White Water" (see: (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) ), year after year.  It's sort of become a tradition of sorts.  ALL of the pages have separated from the book's binding.  The danged thing's pages are kept (roughly) in order by housing it in a tightly fitted plastic baggie.  I wasn't sure how to classify the book for the survey; it's about nature & history & is kind of a trip report, too, but I ended up just calling it "fiction."   It is simply the best canoe trip type story I have ever read.

Sometimes I bring other books with me, too, including plant or animal identification manuals.  Those who paddle with me will testify that I pack all kinds of unnecessary crap on my typical canoe trip (canoe sail, anyone?... it's still up for sale, btw).  If you happen to run out of reading material, just paddle the camp with the tattered flamingo flag to see if what I have in my "library" is of interest to you.

Jimbo   

Makes no sense but the book I've most often brought on canoe trips is Faulkner's Go Down, Moses.

I think it was the line from the beginning of "The Old People", always brought to mind the Q.

"At first there was nothing. There was the faint, cold, steady rain, the gray and constant light of the late November dawn...."

I know there are lots of readers out there in QJ-land.

Most of the book reviews on this board are related in some way to canoeing or wilderness travel, but the books I read when in the backcountry often have nothing to do with those topics. Am I alone in this? What kinds of stuff do you find makes the best tripping reading? (Check as many categories as you like).

Book recommendations are of course welcome! Here's one to start off - for me it seemed to be "perfect" reading material on a backpacking trip last spring:

"The Complete Cosmicomics" by Italo Calvino. This is a collection of short pieces, mostly reminiscences of the protagonist, Qfwfq. An immortal of unspecified origin, Qfwfq was present at just about every important event in the history of the universe, and the earth in particular: the coalescence of dust into galaxies, the formation of the Milky Way, the separation of the moon from the earth, the first life to move out of the ocean onto land, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and more. Have you ever wondered if there was sex in the singularity preceding the Big Bang? Or tagliatelle? Or what meiosis and mitosis feel like? It's all there. (Note: "Complete" is a compendium of three books, of which the first was just called "Cosmicomics". You probably want the trilogy version.)