Is anyone here a devotee of airport fiction?

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You know the kind I mean! Those books that always have "Bestseller" on the cover even though they aren't! I have this insane urge to not read anything I can't find in Oxfam for 25p for the next month! Where should I start? How can you tell a 'good' one from a 'bad' one?

― tarden, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never bought a book at an airport. Whenever I hear the term "airport fiction" I always think of John Grisham, though.

― Michael, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You want to be Mr. Topical really, get some Jeffery Archer.

― DG, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I first saw Communion in an airport (tho admittedly didn't buy it there, as didn't know what it was — the ad campaign just had the Grey's face, no title, no author name...)

I didn't read it till after I saw the VERY GREAT/QUITE WEIRD film (w.Christopher Walken and Lindsay Crouse) some years later. The book is even odder, esp.considered as pulp lit.

― mark s, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I would suppose the last airporty book I read was Hannibal. Does that count?

― DG, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Communion" is a damn weird movie esp. Christopher Wlaken disco- dancing with aliens. Choice quote-"I didn't ask for an anal probe!!"

― Michael, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I nearly got kicked outta school in gradde 8 for reading clive cussler - as eddy murphy once commented re his conversaation with bill cosby, they didn't like the way he said fuck.

― Geoff, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

Today I saw a railway employee, a ticket seller in fact, reading a DUNE book. The seriousness, or maybe portentousness, of the cover, the impression that it was part of an extended series which must be pursued to one end or the other or both, made me think about how 'popular fiction' gets marketed, read and thought about in ways which lend it a feeling of seriousness that may be supposed to match some of the seriousness of canonical literature.

I tried to think of a way of reporting on this which would make it clear that (as is the case) I was not interested in high-cultural dismissals, hierarchies, etc, but I couldn't be bothered after a while.

On the platform the sun was shining.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 15 July 2003 11:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Has anybody here read any of the "Left Behind" series? I'm fascinated by how awful the bits I read in the airport bookstore are, and by how brazen the authors are ("This book is about the one event after which there will be no further events! However, we're going to draw the series out indefinitely!"), but I don't wanna give those people any money, so I just think about them instead of actually reading them.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 13:39 (twenty-one years ago)

snob! ;-)

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

dune wasn't planned as part of a series — it came out as a novella in a mag, and the fan-readers responded so strongly that frank herbert expanded it into a (long) book, then a three-part series

then he stopped and said NO MORE but later in life strapped for cash gave in to the publishers' pleas and it ended up being i don't know HOW long...

i think trilogies briefly carried the quasi-serious cachet of being tolkien-esque, but that this was frittered away fairly quickly (death knell = probably the ewoks in star wars three...)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 13:54 (twenty-one years ago)

snob! ;-)

It's probably more a matter of not wanting to support the lunatic Xtian right. I sometimes worry that my purchase of a used copy of Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 funded part of an abortion clinic bomb or "God Hates Fags" sign. The movie is high-quality though.

― adam (adam), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 13:56 (twenty-one years ago)

If you bought it used than it didn't fund anyone other than the person or store you bought it from.

― NA. (Nick A.), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

haha I lived with a guy who bought one of those books w/o knowing what it was. He thought it was just another clancy type thing. I flipped through it, and it started with a CAST OF CHARACTERS which is always so so handy. Anyway they're very john birch-y; the anti-christ character is a vaguely stalino-vampiric UNITED NATIONS SEC GEN. I don't remember any of the language other than that is sucked and I laughed at it (so it was kind of clancy-y ha).

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

bought my copy of crime and punichment at an airport.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 15:43 (twenty-one years ago)

are you sure it is the book you think it is?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 15:48 (twenty-one years ago)

yes, i am. it was the 'dumbed down' version.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 15:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Has anybody here read any of the "Left Behind" series? I'm fascinated by how awful the bits I read in the airport bookstore are, and by how brazen the authors are

I keep picking them up at the library because it's like watching a train wreck. It's not just the books themselves ... the "theology" is so bad. And I don't even mean "evangelical Protestantism is dumb0r." I mean they consistently represent the theologies of other denominations incorrectly in order to try to score points. It's like ... you know those books of "funny things students said in term papers," like "George Washington was the father of our country cause he had so many kids" and whatnot? It's like that. It's horrible and yet you keep reading because you want to simultaneously laugh and slap the fucker.

That said, the first few chapters or so of the first book was not good, but was about on par with what Tom Clancy I've read. Before the religious stuff comes in, it starts out like "The Langoliers"!

As for airport fiction in general, that's what I write. Ideally I like to think of it as escapist stuff that isn't dumbed down, so demanding readers can read it for fun without getting exasperated by being talked down to.

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 15:52 (twenty-one years ago)

(never got around to doing this btw)

― dave q, Tuesday, 15 July 2003 16:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I enjoyed Harlan Coben's "Gone For Good".

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Tuesday, 15 July 2003 21:43 (twenty-one years ago)

seven years pass...

airprot fiction only good for like porn on the grind

― s-Rite, Wednesday, 6 July 2011 03:30 (thirteen years ago)

You sound like a man of sound judgement and delicate tastes. Have you discovered the sister forum to this one, I Love Books? We need more readers of your kidney. Step around and say cheerio.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 6 July 2011 03:34 (thirteen years ago)

tom clancy's fiction for airports

― Lamp, Wednesday, 6 July 2011 05:28 (thirteen years ago)

i once met the guy who wrote that book 'the president's plane is missing.'

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 6 July 2011 06:05 (thirteen years ago)

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