I’m heading out on vacation this afternoon, so I won’t be blogging until the week of June 3.

Normally, my vacation notes include a list of books I plan to read while on vacation. However, this first stab at vacation includes a lot of driving, so I don’t think there will be a lot of time to read. I do hope to finish the John Updike novel, Rabbit Redux. And I suspect I’ll start another book. I’m not sure which one I’ll tackle next. At some point, I’ve to go take the plunge and tackle David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Do I want to tackle a 1,000-page novel? Or do I want to go with the novella-like length The Quick Red Fox by John D. MacDonald?

When you go on vacation, is that the time you tackle the tough novels?

I’m reading Rabbit Redux by John Updike. What a wonderful novel, and further to my last blog post, this novel deserves to be called a classic. I think it’s so much stronger than the first Rabbit novel and it gives me hope the next one.

So why is it a classic? Well, then you read it, it could easily have been written last year, it’s themes and messages still so true today. The circumstances and the way people lived were different. I wonder if the ideas presented in 1971 were exciting or new or controversial. Although they’re still relevant today, they are nevertheless familiar. But back in ’71, there must have been a freshness to some of the things Updike wrote.

It’s been a couple of weeks now since I bought the Kindle Paperwhite. That’s enough time to give you a proper review.

Like all Kindles, it’s very easy to set up. Very little to do. Registering the Kindle was simple as all I had to do was enter my e-mail address associated with my Kindle account.

I have more than 150 e-books so it did take a little bit of time to download them all onto the Paperwhite. But there were no other hiccups.

The text is smooth and the controls for font size, light, etc. are easy to access. With the light on full, there are some shadows at the bottom of the screen. They are a bit annoying but not a deal breaker.

The touch screen is pretty responsive, although nothing compared to the iPad or other tablets. You can use a touch from the left or wipe or dow a swipe to turn pages.

Shopping in the Kindle store is easy and the virtual keyboard is nice given the lack of screen space. I found it easier to use the virtual keyboard over the hard keyboard on some earlier Kindle models.

The back of the Kindle is great. Very easy to grip and it’s not as cold as the earlier models. It might seem like a little thing, but I found your fingers could get really cold with the metal back.

My only complaint is the black finish. It looks great for about 10-15 minutes. But after that, it’s just fingerprints. It’s not easy to keep clean. But I suspect the black finish is needed to make the screen pop even more when you have the light on. I would have rather had a white finish.

Dan Brown has made a lot of money writing books. He moves a lot of books. He has a loyal following. But he does have his critics.

Here’s one review by The Guardian’s Peter Conrad.

I finished reading my third Jilly Cooper novel today. My wife is a big fan and I have to admit the novels are fun.

The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous was a lot better read than Pandora, which I struggled to get through at different times.

I haven’t decided what I’m reading next. It’s between Liza MarkLund’s Lifetime and Liza Klaussmann’s Tigers in Red Weather. It’s odd that I’m just noticing now that the authors share the same first name.

I tried to read an earlier novel by Marklund but gave up, one of the few novels that I started but didn’t finish. This one is another Annika Bengtzon mystery. Bengtzon is a new reporter who solves murders. Maybe the reason this character has never appealed to me is: 1) Reporters don’t solve workers. 2) Most young reporters don’t work the hours Bengtzon work.

That’s not a slight against today’s young journalists. It’s just that I find the way some journalists are portrayed in the media to not match up with reality. I’ll give this book a try and perhaps I’ll be convinced otherwise.