Okay, I got such sage advice in my long flight thread that I thought I would throw this question out as well:
What would you recommend for in-flight reading? I’m looking for something nice and fat here–I read fast.
I won’t post my preferences, because you might come up with some good ideas from a genre I wouldn’t ordinarily gravitate to.
Why, I just LOVE airplane books! I’m especially fond of the British ones with lots of beautiful paintings of the planes in profile and plenty of statistics. But mostly just prop planes. Jets leave me cold.
Uh, that wasn’t really what you were looking for, was it?
I read fast too. The following are some suggestions that are interesting, yet not too heavy (I find I have poor attention span when cooped up) and weighty, all at the same time.
Red Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson: Colonization of Mars on an epic, yet human scale.(and, if you like it, you can follow up with the sequels, Green Mars and Blue Mars… all 3 or which have won either Hugo or Nebula awards)
All Creatures Great & Small – James Herriot: for your basic heartwarming Bumbling-English-Vet-in-The-Country tales. Also has 3 sequels in case of further travel.
The Stand (unedited, unabridged edition) – Stephen King. Good v. evil in Post-apocolypic America.
I’ll try to think of some more…
One of my favourite series is The Camulod Chronicles by Jack Whyte.
Book 1: The Skystone
Book 2: The Singing Sword
Book 3: The Eagles’ Brood
Book 4: The Saxon Shore
Book 5: The Fort at River’s Bend
and so on (I can’t remember the names of the rest offhand)
They’re a great series taking the Arthurian mythos, erasing the mythology part, and looking at it as an historical narrative from 3 generations before Arthur, when the Romans were about to pull out of Britain.
Bear in mind: ** This is not fantasy! ** It has NO magic, NO special effects and takes a purely historical viewpoint as it might really have happened.
If you do choose this, let me know what you think.
I just read a book called “e” (as in e-mail) that was a light, frothy, hilarious little book. It’s comprised of various e-mails sent and received within a (fictional) advertising agency in London. I can’t remember the author, but it was a very entertaining, no-brainer type of book.
For fat books that are nevertheless light reading, I prefer Anthony Trollope. They are in many ways the 19th century equivalent of the Harlequin romance, but much better-written, and typically 800+ pages. One warning is that like much of the English literature of the time, they are pretty anti-Semitic. Can You Forgive Her?, Barchester Towers, or Mr. Scarborough’s Family are probably good first choices.
do ** not** bring Michale Crighton’s * Airframe *
actually I prefer puzzle books and magazines - less to keep track of from moment to moment, you won’t worry about leaving it behind etc.
rmariamp, you would recommend Red Mars? It’s not what I would consider an easy “airplane” type of book. Thick yes, enjoyable, eh… Very interesting from a technical, step by step, standpoint, but there were hundreds of characters in it to spread out your emotions on. Most of them got lost in the shuffle. The ones I did like got killed!
wring, I wouldn’t not recommend “Airframe” for the subject matter. I would do it because the book SUCKED.
You want thick? Try Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. 840 pages and I guarantee you’ll get swept up in it from page 1. Took me about 5 days to finish this one before I ran out and bought the second in the series.
Right now I’m reading 2001. Very short for a novel, but it’s quite interesting. I’ll let you know how it is.
Here’s one probably no one’s heard of: Space Opera by Jack Vance. Very Very short. It took me around 5 hours to finish this book but I found it to be kinda humorous. It’s about an opera company that travels the universe trying to enlighten aliens. OOP though, so check used book stores.
Oh, I just remembered two by Frederick Pohl. Man Plus and Gateway are both excellent books.
That should be enough to get you through your trip.
Ditto. I read most of this series in bet from 3-7 am when I should have been asleep. If you like this kind of stuff, I have enough recommendations to keep you going for a year or so.
blessedwolf wrote:
Then why in heck did he call one of the books The Singing Sword?! That title just screams magic swords and fire-breathing dragons and wisened old wizards and voluptuous elf-maidens. It’s false advertising if you ask me!
Blessedwolf, you are correct! The Camulod Chronicles are BRILLIANT!
Uh, tracer, even in the Arthurian legends the sword didn’t actually sing…and in the Whyte novel it’s a reference to the clear tone it made when whacked against a hard object - a sign of the quality of its forging.
Also along this vein is Firelord, by Parke Godwin. Historical setting for Arthur, written very realistically in a historical backdrop. Also by this author (no idea if Parke is a man’s name or a woman’s) are Sherwood and its sequel Robin and the King. Very good reading. Changes everything you ever thought about the legends, but in a good way.
I would not suggest Michael Crichton’s “Airframe”…a fabulous book, but you’ll learn all the different ways a plane can disintegrate.
What sort of stuff do you normally read? Read that. If its too short, bring two books.
Very true. I was in the airport in New York, looking for something to read, and since I really like fantasy, that title jumped out at me. Even though it was the second in the series, it stood very well on its own. As soon as I was done with it, I got the first and third and started the series the right way. If you’d like an explanation as to why it was named The Singing Sword, e-mail me, and I’ll let you know (sorry, no spoilers here).
I read fast, too. And earlier this year, I made two round trips between Oregon and Florida, which means lots of time in the air and time in the airports.
So here were the books that saved me from going insane during these trips. They’re nice and long, and for me at least, were interesting enough.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Great historical fiction, with the story surrounding the construction of a cathedral in 12-13th Century Britain.
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. I actually like it more than The Lord of the Rings.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Outstanding book, but like some of his other works, it has a rather abrupt ending.
A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is my favorite book by John Irving. A movie called “Simon Birch” came out not too long ago, which was a very loose adaptation of the book. If you’ve seen the movie, put it out of your mind. The book is a million times better.
On my last plane trip, I read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Very good, very funny. Excellent plane material, involves no plane crashes. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing about plant torturing, Satanic nuns, or disobedient anti-Christs. 
I don’t think it would last for a very long plane trip, though (you’re going to Scotland, right?). Maybe you’ll have a good movie or two, translatlantic flights are hellish.
Plant torturing?
Smeghead wanders off to bed with a puzzled look on his face…
Having spent a fair amount of time as a passenger on buses and relatively short plane rides (not many nonstop flights from Minneapolis to San Antonio), I appreciate books of light essays like Dave Barry’s, any of the Straight Dope books, and that sort of thing. The fact that I’m usually under the influence of a tranquilizer should explain the need for light reading.
Robin
Whoah - You’re going to Scotland? Well, that changes everything. Read anything and everything ever written by Nigel Tranter - Scotland’s most renowned author for historical fiction with the emphasis on “historical”. I’m reading “The Wallace” right now (GREAT book, BTW) and I found another of his books recently. Check out reader opinions about him on Amazon.com and you’ll see that I speak the truth…
Oddly, I always prefer to pick something up locally just before boarding the plane. On the initial leg outboutnd, of course, that’s in the airport lobby, where I suddenly remember that I’ve forgotten to bring something again. On the other legs, I try to get something that reflects the local scene or a local author.
That way it seems like one more souvenir of the trip.
Go for big fat novels that don’t go all boring on you.
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV got me from New York to Rome comfortably earlier this year.
Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE is great, if you haven’t read it yet. One tremendous character after another, exciting plot…you’ll hardly believe you read 900 pages.
If you want something more contempo, how about James Jones’ FROM HERE TO ETERNITY? Over a thousand pages, great story. You’ll be shocked at how much good stuff they had to leave out of the movie.