If you're on vacation, how about reading short stories? At Perpetual Folly, Clifford Garstang is blogging his choices of the New Yorker's best stories of 2007, and links to each story at the end of his own thoughts on each tale.

Read the stories he considered before narrowing it down to a top 5 list. He invites you to vote your favorites in the blog's right column.

Paging though them would be a fine way to spend a quiet winter night, especially if it's your first downtime in a while. Print them if you want to curl up by the fire with paper.

Note: I found this post because Clifford was suggested by LinkedIn as "People you may know." I don't, but, following a profile link to his blog, I fell into this rich cache of reading.