Reading Under the Palms: Curating the Perfect Tropical Book List

A beach holiday is the perfect time to get your reading habits back on track. Back home, you might read the book on your nightstand for about 20 minutes before you fall asleep, but in the tropics, you have hours to finally get through your “To Be Read” list.

That kind of reading time is too good to waste on the wrong books. So, before you leave home, it’s worth putting together a more curated reading list.

What Makes a Great Tropical Read?

When you’re on vacation, pace matters more than genre. A slow and atmospheric novel usually requires a little more patience to read, but that’s exactly what you have. The time and the space to read, completely uninterrupted.

What you don’t want is something that you’ll need to reread every few pages to understand or a complex book that requires deep concentration. You’re on a vacation, after all, so the point is to relax.

Build a Balanced Reading List

Every good beach holiday deserves at least one reflective memoir or travel classic. For example, Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia or Dervla Murphy’s Full Tilt. These books are easy to dip in and out of, which is great when you’re lounging on the beach with a cocktail in hand or seeing the sights and reading in between.

A page-turner is the perfect pick when you want to fill up an afternoon between breakfast at a local cafe and your dinner reservations. Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is a classic, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is hard to put down. Plus, almost anything by Anna Burns will build up enough suspense to keep you reading without pause.

Lastly, you’ll need something for slower afternoons where you don’t necessarily want to spend too much time in your room, but you also have an hour or two to kill before your next adventure. In these cases, short story collections are brilliant. Collections by Alice Munro and Yiyun Li have the perfect pace to suit the drowsy middle hours in the late afternoons.

Tropics-Specific Reads

Some of the most rewarding reading you’ll do in the Tropics actually relates to your destination. For instance, books written by Caribbean authors or with Caribbean main characters are a good way to link reality and fiction.

Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is a must-read for anyone spending time in the Caribbean and should be at the top of your packing list. It’s so good that you can read it all in one sitting.

It’s forty pages long but impossible to forget. So, if you’re embarking on a Caribbean cruise, reading books from the islands you’re passing through can change your experience entirely.

If you’re in the mood for something a little different, Patric Chamoiseau’s Texaco or Michelle Cliff’s Abeng are both exciting and immersive reads that will make you appreciate your holiday destination a whole lot more.

Matching Books to Moments

The right book at the wrong time is still the wrong book. Mornings are better for long-form journalism and essays. Things like newspapers, literary magazines, John McPhee, or Joan Didion are the ideal breakfast companions.

In the afternoons, you can either devour a novel or read one or two short stories (or shorter books) before you tick another item off your itinerary.

At sunset, head out onto the beach and grab yourself a cozy hammock. Don’t forget to take something more visceral, like a book of poetry. Poems are short enough to enjoy without taking all of your focus off the moment in front of you.