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Flying during one of the busiest travel seasons of the year means a lot of waiting. To help you pass the time at the gate and on the tarmac, we asked The Atlantic’s writers and editors: What is the best airport book?
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
There’s a reason the stereotypical “airport novel” is a thriller. When you are trapped in the metal sky tube, or the pre-tube waiting room, all you really need is for time to go by. And that means you need plot, baby! With no disrespect, this is not the place for the meandering introspections of literary fiction, much as I adore that in other contexts. For a mystery with style and substance, you can’t do much better than The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. In a supernatural Groundhog Day twist on a classic “someone dies at a rich-people party” whodunnit, a detective relives the day of a murder over and over in the body of a different guest each time. The characters are richly imagined; their unique skills and flaws shape what the detective is able to figure out each day. This adds a psychological depth to the intricate puzzle of the mystery itself—after you start this book, you’ll be landing before you know it.
— Julie Beck, staff writer
***
Speedboat, by Renata Adler
I first read this book while on vacation last summer, and when I picked it up again this week, I found that I remembered almost none of it. This is a compliment—a testament to its hypnotic effect. Adler’s first novel has no real plot to follow, instead unspooling in a series of shorter and slightly longer fragments: mostly observations and pronouncements in the voice of a New York journalist, Jen Fain, about her city, her acquaintances, her work, current affairs. It’s a book you can dip in and out of. Nab a few passages while you’re at your gate, or let it wash over you until you’re distracted by the jostling drinks cart. Adler refuses clichés; her prose is unexpected and funny and assured. The novel is full of non sequiturs and random anecdotes; although it rewards close (and multiple) reads, it is pleasurable even if you miss some of it or end up reading some sentences twice.
— Maya Chung, senior associate editor
***
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
My preferences for in-flight entertainment are counterintuitive: Nothing distracts me like an epic does. Never mind the tight confines of a tiny screen or an arm-crushing middle seat; in the liminal world of airplane mode, time sprawls gloriously, if you know how to use it. When film selections are subpar, I prefer cracking a book that is long, absorbing, and reasonably difficult. This year, on the way to Thanksgiving, I finished Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady—more than 600 pages of brambly syntax, intimate character studies, subtle reasoning, and devious hidden motives. I found it far easier to enjoy the machinations of the 19th-century leisure class amid the din of screaming babies and PA announcements than I would have if my news alerts were enabled. Isabel Archer could agonize over her choices during days-long train rides and months-long holidays; I can just as keenly consider them on the 7:45 a.m. flight to PHX.
— Boris Kachka, senior editor
***
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Collins’s dystopian tale has all the elements of a solid airplane book: a fast-moving plot, uncomplicated world-building, and a poignant conclusion, good for an emotional release at 30,000 feet without ruining your mood for the rest of the day. The first book in the trilogy offers a straightforward and captivating David-versus-Goliath story about teens trying to survive a deadly spectacle put on by an ailing autocrat for the benefit of society’s elites. The latter two books make for more sobering but still compelling reads, as the clear-cut morality of the first novel gives way to Catching Fire’s debate over incremental rather than revolutionary change, and then to Mockingjay’s consideration of complicity and the slippery slope of corruption. Plus, if you finish reading all three before your trip is over, you can always go back to the start and watch the film versions.
— Karen Ostergren, deputy copy chief
***
Aimless Love, by Billy Collins
Airport trips are full of distractions: The stop-and-go TSA line. The gate-change notifications. And just when you think you can finally focus, the muffled intercom voice that tells you to board. Yet once you’re in flight, the pace slows and your mind can start to wander.
Aimless Love, a poetry collection by the former poet laureate Billy Collins, suits all of these facets of air travel. His quippy, slice-of-life poems thrive when time is scarce. (See the bite-size “No Time” about parental dynamics, or the pedestrian-mall devotion of “Oh, My God!”) But they also quickly give way to weightier meditations—about maternal dedication, or the endurance of poetry, or a love “without gifts, / or unkind words, without suspicion, / or silence on the telephone”—that can only benefit from a gaze out at the firmament.
— Luis Parrales, assistant editor
Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
- The cover story: Why is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. so convinced he’s right?
- Sophie Gilbert: The culture war comes to the kitchen.
- Chatbots are becoming really, really good criminals.
Essay
Make Culture Weird Again
By W. David Marx
Twenty-five years into the 21st century, culture is markedly different than it was in the previous millennium. Everyday life has never contained more stuff—an endless reel of words, ideas, games, songs, videos, memes, outrageous statements, celebrity meltdowns, life hacks, extremely talented animals. Yet audiences can sense what’s missing. For all the energy society invests in culture today, little has emerged that feels new, and certainly nothing revolutionary enough to properly outmode the past.
Photo Album
Here are some weird, wonderful photos from the archives.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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The post Five Books to Read on Your Next Flight appeared first on The Atlantic.
