If you habitually run out of space trying to bring new stuff home from trips, try this: On the outbound leg, wear an old set of clothes that you’re about to get rid of anyway. Discard (or donate) them when you arrive. You’ve just regained several tens of cubic inches of luggage space. And that paperback you finished on the plane? Leave it in the hotel lobby, or at a local coffee shop that has a bookshelf.
Refilling the newly available luggage space is left as an exercise.
With a bit of time to kill before a flight, I wandered into the news stand in terminal C at the San Jose airport, thinking that a paperback might catch my eye. After a few minutes of looking, I noticed something odd: There was no science fiction. Plenty of the usually horror, detective, and dysfunctional family fare, but no sci fi. I looked again, and eventually found two—a single copy of Greg Bear’s Eon, and one other from an author I didn’t recognize with a heavily recycled plot line that I did. They did have a copy Halo, which I suppose is arguably science fiction. But come on! The gateway to Silicon Valley, and no sci fi? That’s just wrong.