Brain food on vacation

As I prepare to go rustic camping for a week in the beautiful Laurentian mountains (i.e. no electricity or running water and I have to schlep my stuff almost a half a kilometre to my site), my friends have been snickering at me because my book bag is almost as large as my food and clothing bags. They're assuming that I am toting around all the latest in brain candy a la Nora Roberts, Dean Koontz, Sherrilyn Kenyon etc. However, if they had been able to take a peek in my admittedly bulging black nylon bookbag, they would be surprised -- it is holding as much brain food as candy.

So what am I bringing with me to read under the blue skies, pine and birch trees and sparkling waters of Lake Monroe? Here's a small crosscut:

Dilemmas of the American Self by John Hewitt
Hewitt is my new favourite symbolic interactionist. His view is more pessimistic than the classic SI theorists and his idea of juggling constructed identities through strategies of self construction make sense to me from the excerpted chapters I've read. I look forward to seeing how it ties together into a coherent unified theory.

The Internet Galaxy by Manuel Castells
I've read bits and drabs of this, of course. No self-respecting digital culture academic can ignore it. I've never taken the time to read it in its entirety though. I hope to do so this week.

Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
His latest book is one I've been waiting to read as he tends to take a rather positive approach to Western popular culture, while still managing to be analytically critical. This book in particular interests me because it deals with an issue that I know several digital game researchers have to confront daily - the perceived idea that video games are bad for us and bad for humanity overall. I look forward to seeing how he constructs the alternate argument.

What Just Happened? by James Glick
Got this in the remainders discount bin through Indigo. It goes over the beginnings of info tech and its strange laissez-faire attitude with software defects (aka "bugs"). While it may rehash much that I already knew, I hope to glean some new insights. And yes this book might straddle the divide between food and candy.

It is my hope that I get to read a few of these, though even I, fast-reader that I am, cannot hope to read all 30 of the books I've brought. But better feast than famine when on vacation, hmmm?

I leave today, so I'll be silent here for a week. I'll post again upon my return and let you know how I did, and what the balance between brain food and brain candy actually ended up being.