I was the the airport recently picking up some family members and while I was waiting for their flight to arrive, I decided to browse through the airport bookshop.
It got me thinking about the genre of Airport Novel - fast-paced, easily readable books designed for people waiting at airports/railway stations or travelling long distances.
What surprised me was how many books were for sale in the bookshop, yet how I couldn’t see that many people reading books in the arrivals/departures area.
Which got me thinking: When was the last time you bought a novel at an airport for something like reading on the plane or while waiting for your flight?
Mine was a copy of Gai-Jin by James Clavell, which I picked up at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2011.
Yeah. I picked up a John Sanford novel at the MPLS-STP airport in April 2016. This was also the last time I was at an airport.* I almost always buy an airport novel, at the airport. Just in case I have to turn off my Kindle.
*Not counting the one I landed at.
Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon. A murder mystery set around the Manhattan Project.
I bought it for a flight from Tokyo to Boston back around '99, and I think I finished it during the flight or soon after.
The only thing I found memorable about it was that the first 30-odd pages had been misprinted from another book. From what I was able to glean, it was set in the Foundation universe, but written by someone with far, far less talent than Asimov.
The last book I bought in an airport was a paperback copy of the Stephen King short story collection “Full Dark, No Stars”; that was probably in 2011 or 2012. Nowadays I just have a bunch of books downloaded from Project Gutenberg on my tablet.
When I was younger I traveled by bus from NYC to Boston for the summer and back again when school started. I was 14 or 15 the last time I did this and innocently picked up Flowers In The Attic to keep me occupied on the 5 hour trip.
I don’t know who I blame more for never taking that trip to Boston ever again, my evil stepmother or this book.
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze;19967590I almost always buy an airport novel, at the airport. Just in case I have to turn off my Kindle.[/QUOTE]
I haven’t flown in decades. Is there really a time when you have to turn off your Kindle?
Last Thanksgiving, before getting on a plane to New York, I bought a Jack Reacher paperback that I quite enjoyed, but forgot almost completely five minutes after I got off the plane.
Can’t even remember the title, and don’t care enough to look it up.
Smoke by Dan Vyleta. Kind of a historical fiction novel set in a world where sinning has a publicly visible component to it.
I heard an interview of the author on NPR, thought the concept sounded interesting, and then promptly forgot about it. Then just a couple of days later, I saw it on a shelf at the airport while buying some pre-flight water and figured, “What the hell?” It was the first hardcover I’d bought in probably over a decade.
I’ve only ever gone on two flights in my entire life-- round-trip from Indianapolis to Los Angeles. This was long before the Amazon Kindle came out. I believe I bought a Star Trek: New Frontier novel.
Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Anne Rice. I enjoyed it, but cannot recommend it. Read a fair chunk on a flight from Ft. Myers, FL, to Atlantic City.
