Tag Sieben - Book recommendations?

Getting back to the other half of what this blog is purportedly about: books. I never travel without a book (or several) to read. I took Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting to Mexico, Persuasion to England, and The Remains of the Day to Wales and Paris. But I'm at a loss as to what to pack for this trip. For one thing, it's my first long vacation. Seven weeks without internet access and a steady supply of socks to knit (though I will take a small project with me) makes for a very restless Yao. I don't want to take anything from my current fiction stack, so it'll have to be a new book or something that I haven't read before. So, any recommendations? I'd like something in paperback and preferably modern but not necessarily.

PS: Elliott would like me to report that he's taking one Vonnegut book, Nabokov's The Gift, possibly one non-fiction book, one of the few Murakami books that he hasn't read, and possibly a book by Orhan Pamuk (though it'd be a little cliche to read it in Istanbul, especially if we try to stalk him in Nisantasi).

PPS: I think that Elliott really should update his own blog.