This past week, I’ve been in Ireland on vacation, which involved two flights of over eight hours. So naturally, I took my Kindle (it’s space efficient AND doesn’t require an outside light during sleeping hours) and got some reading done! Since I’m still recovering, you’re going to get a list of what I read and some brief thoughts instead of a full review.

Usually when I fly, I read fiction – the more fantastical the better – to distract from the dreariness of airplanes and airports. This trip, I wanted to use the time to do some gardening research, so I read one piece of fiction and then spent the rest of the time on gardening books.

American Princess: A Novel of First Daughter Alice Roosevelt by Stephanie Marie Thornton (2019)

This novelization of Alice Roosevelt’s life was interesting, but I think I’d have preferred a nonfiction account instead of a fictionalization. You’ll see more about this one later this month, as Bethany and I are reviewing it together!

Vertical Gardening: The Beginner’s Guide to Organic & Sustainable Produce Production Without a Backyard by Olivia Abby (2016)

I downloaded a bunch of random free gardening books from the Amazon Kindle store since I really want to strategically approach my garden this year. Unfortunately, there was a reason this one was free. It was about the quality you’d expect from an ad-filled website called verticalgardening101.com. I learned nothing.

Gardening 101: Friendship Gardens by Henry Owen and Katherine Metzo (2014)

This is a local gardening resource from a nonprofit group in North Carolina. Even though the planting schedules were not relevant to me, I learned a few tricks and really like how they formatted their info. It’s definitely the most useful for people in the Southeast region, though.

Home Vegetable Gardening: A Complete and Practical Guide to the Planting and Care of All Vegetables, Fruits, and Berries Worth Growing for Home Use by F.F. Rockwell (1917)  This book was by far the most useful of the gardening books that I found for free in the Kindle store. It’s only free because it’s old enough to be in the public domain, and the information is still relevant and easy to understand, even though the book is over 100 years old. It has a TON of practical information. This does make it a bit dense, and I haven’t actually finished it yet, but I am already more confident that I can improve my garden this year with info from this book. My only real complaint is that the ebook version I got does not include pictures, and there are a couple places that refer to images, which makes those sections pretty useless. Even still, I 100% recommend this book if you want to learn lots about soil and plants.

So, that’s what I read on vacation! How do you occupy yourself on long plane rides?