Memories, pressed between the pages of a book

I accomplished most of my major goals yesterday: I pruned my butterfly bushes and my hydrangeas, even though I had to do it with a pair of pruners instead of the loppers that my brother borrowed some time ago; dragged up and emptied my luggage; got my oil changed and my car washed; got to the record store (do people even know what the word "record" refers to?) and bought a bunch of CDs, mostly for my friend in Ireland; and bought a small stack of books.

Some of the books are slim volumes for putting into my carry-on and reading at the airport or on the plane. Two of them are books of short stories for helping me to record the experiences of the trip. When I travel I try to take a book along to read at key points along the way. Whenever I re-read the book later, I re-experience the smells, the sounds, the weather, the mood - all of the sensory experiences that I felt during the trip itself. I can tell you where I was when I read a given passage, maybe what time of day it was, or even what the weather was like. Whenever I want to re-live the experiences of my last visit to Ireland, I just get out my copy of Harlan Ellison's collection of the edgiest science-fiction writing of the late 1960's, Dangerous Visions. As I read this story or that story, I am back at my friend's house in the cold early morning hours before anyone else is stirring, or I am sitting at a table in her kitchen on a sunny mid-morning drinking tea and waiting for her to get ready. It's all there, encoded into the pages of a book.

Does anyone else do this?