We’re planning a trip to New Zealand later this year. We’re abandoning the kids to look after the house and probably the business and escaping to the fair islands not that far away. There are many things to worry about: flights; accommodation; touristy bits; family; friends and; the most important of all is the reading matter.

I’m a fairly fast reader and this week I’m doing my best to read most or all of a book before we see the play on Saturday. It’s Café Scheherazade and I’ll write more about that in due course after the play and the book. It’s a good book, absolutely beautifully written and I’m thoroughly enjoying the writing. I hope to have it finished by Saturday despite having so much else to do. What I’m really saying is that when I’m busy it’s likely that I’ll get through an average sized book in about a week or a week and a half. We’ll be away for three weeks and will only have driving and touristy stuff to do. I’ll have concentrated time to sit and read most days and I’m wondering how I’ll cope, I just don’t know how many books to take. There is another way though.

A few weeks ago I floated the idea of an ebook reader to the Twitter chat #spbkchat to find out what people use and how they feel about it. I also mentioned it to some of my Discworld friends before the meeting started. I opened up a can of worms. Each person tried to convince me that their ebook reader was the best, some of them brought them out and showed them to me and of course, the iPads came out as well. At this point I became totally confused. I had been fixated on an ebook reader but you can’t do much with them, tablets are a whole new ballgame. There seem to be a few on the market, not just the iPad, but also some Android ones. They seem really versatile as you can install several different brands of ebook reading software, games, have internet access and so much more.

Now I’m confused and don’t know which way to go. Do I buy an ebook reader and limit myself just to books from one place? Do I spend heaps more money to buy a tablet that can do so much more? Do I just sidestep the whole issue and take a couple of books with me assuming I can buy more on the way and leave them all behind as we run out of space in our baggage? But which books? I don’t know which ones I’ll mind leaving behind until I’ve read them. If the tablets were cheaper the decision would be easy and I’d just buy one with 3G, but they’re a significant amount of money and I don’t have a money tree in my back yard. I’d love some help with making up my mind, really.