One good thing about going to Europe (if you're a big dork) is all the train/plane travel gives you a lot of time to read.

Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me: already discussed here. I finished it before our plane left Greensboro.

Nabokov, Speak, Memory: This book should depress the hell out of you, because you're not Nabokov, and you never will be. Fortunately it's very good, which almost makes up for it.

Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume I: If you're not a Dylan fan, you can safely pass on this. If you are a Dylan fan, by god, what are you waiting for?

The Anchor Book of New American Short Stores: Recommended here. Man, that Wells Tower story was good.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick: I was told this is a good book to read while backpacking through Europe. Oddly enough, it is. Buy the Norton Edition so you can read Harrison Hayford's amazing "Unnecessary Duplicates" essay afterwards, which postulates fairly convincingly that Melville's revision style consisted solely of adding words, never removing or rewriting.

Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead: A baldly nihilistic story of combat in World War II that, bizarrely, is my very liberal friend Casey's favorite book. She's a vegetarian, for Christ's sake, but she loves Dead. Written when Mailer was 23, the passages of true genius easily outweigh the awkward moments.

At this point the trip was halfway over and I'd already read all the books I brought from America. It was English-language bookstores in Paris and Rome from here on out.

Graham Greene, The Quiet American: A microcosm of the Vietnam War that should be required reading for every American of voting age. "I've never met someone with such good intentions for all the trouble he causes."

Don DeLillo, Endzone: A college football player becomes obsessed with thoughts of nuclear holocaust. A DeLillo novel ensues.

The Complete Prose of Woody Allen: No explanation necessary.

Telling Tales (EDIT: Forgot this one last night): A short story collection of great short story writers brought together by a book whose publishers donated all the proceeds to charity. The winner? Incredibly, it's John Updike, whose "The Journey to the Dead" is, well, incredible.

Nicholson Baker, Room Temperature: Just like Baker's very underrated novel The Mezzanine, which was great, only this time the character is married and has a kid.

Milan Kundera, Ignorance: A terrific novel about the homecoming of Czech emigres to Prague after the fall of the Communistic regime in 1989, interwoven with thoughts on Odysseus, poetry, memory, and language. I think it's my favorite Kundera. Incredibly highly recommended.

DFW, Oblivion: Out in paperback in Italy already, though not in the states. This is the book I'm on now. You already know whether you'll dig this or not. I do.

Shoutout to Frommer's Italy and Paris guides, as well as Fodor's Italian for Travelers, which were all tremendously useful. Also Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, my favorite novel, which I bought in the original Italian as a keepsake, though I can't read it. Between Jaimee's Italian and my memory of it in English, we were able to read the first chapter.