HoW Pile

Of course, the pile of packing so far is basically books, and I'm getting slightly anxious, as some of them look awfully thin...  What if I read them all in the first couple of days?  It's going to be a long trip there, three flights & fifteen hours flying...  I'm wondering if I should stick the old faithful, battered and bent copy of Lord of the Rings in, that's always good for 3-4 days... 
I did choose these books as a selection of American fiction, although not necessarily typical of Louisiana or New Orleans itself.  I have recently read Anne Rice's "Feast of All Saints" but wasn't all that impressed, found it a little slow until around 75% of the way in, and the characters basically not particularly sympathetic or interesting.  If anyone else has read this I would be interested in hearing your opinion.  I just finished James Lee Burke's "Black Cherry Blues" which suited me far better, the characters jumped off the page at you, and the descriptive parts added mood and didn't slow the pace.

Of course, I could just interact with everyone instead of reading ;)  But I'm guessing there will be bookshops in New Orleans in case of emergency...  so here goes with the first HoW haiku:-

Pages like cloudy

veils, hiding my lack of words

with others' writing.