books for long plane rides

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Criteria:

- easy to read but not facile
- not too short (must be able to least at least a few hours)
- possibly humorous but not Dave Eggers-smarmy
- engaging subject matter or plot

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a very good plane book (though possibly too short).
To the Lighthouse is not.

I need suggestions or in a few weeks I might die of boredom or intense claustrophobia (I have a 12 hour flight, a 9 hour flight, and a 22 hour flight).

― Melissa W (Melissa W), Saturday, 27 March 2004 10:20 (twenty-two years ago)

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 27 March 2004 11:00 (twenty-two years ago)

alaisdair gray 'lanark'.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 27 March 2004 11:02 (twenty-two years ago)

oh sorry didn't read the 'must last a few hours' bit but i think it would meet the other criteria.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 27 March 2004 11:04 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah very good julio. you're trying it, right?!

alasdair gray's "unlikely stories, mostly" might be worth a look though.

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 27 March 2004 11:04 (twenty-two years ago)

"Affair of the Poisons" by Somerset (?).

― jesus nathalie (nathalie), Saturday, 27 March 2004 11:11 (twenty-two years ago)

It gets a bad rap around here, but The DaVinci Code is perfect for your needs. It saw me through a weekend illness quite nicely a month ago.

― 57 7th (calstars), Saturday, 27 March 2004 12:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Larry McMurtry! Decent size, a pleasure to read, funny and sad (often at the same time - no one does that better than him), always hugely engaging and interesting characters that draw you into their stories.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 27 March 2004 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Good books that are substantial but light on their feet (perfect for hovering in air):

Paul Auster, "Book of Illusions" or "Mr. Vertigo"
Haruki Murakami, "Norwegian Wood" or "Dance Dance Dance"
T.C. Boyle, "Drop City"
J.T. Leroy, "Sarah"
Jonathan Lethem, "The Fortress of Solitude" (the good, first half anyway)
Kent Haruf, Plainsong

― m.e.a. (m.e.a.), Saturday, 27 March 2004 14:10 (twenty-two years ago)

"Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?"

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 27 March 2004 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

1988~Andrew McGahan
A Movable Feast-Hemmingway

― thomas de'aguirre (biteylove), Saturday, 27 March 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

"Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. It fulfills all of your listed requirements and is very funny as well.

― Sengai, Saturday, 27 March 2004 14:47 (twenty-two years ago)

READ THE GOOD BOIOK!! GET SOME GOD NI YOUR FACE AND GET THAT JESUS CHUCKLE IN YOU!!

― KARL SMUMFY!, Saturday, 27 March 2004 14:52 (twenty-two years ago)

"Lizard" by Banana Yoshimoto. Also, "Confederacy of Dunces" is hilarious, good call.

― webcrack (music=crack), Saturday, 27 March 2004 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

t.c. boyle - riven rock
michael chabon - the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay*
jeffrey eugenides - middlesex*
colson whitehead - the intuitionist
zadie smith - white teeth*
carson mccullers - the heart is a lonely hunter*

* in-flight tested on trips of five hours or longer

― lauren (laurenp), Saturday, 27 March 2004 16:52 (twenty-two years ago)

O, the heart is a lonely hunter!

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 27 March 2004 16:56 (twenty-two years ago)

also: phillip roth - goodbye, columbus and/or portnoy's complaint

― lauren (laurenp), Saturday, 27 March 2004 16:57 (twenty-two years ago)

what's that colson whitehead novel like? I read and enjoyed some of my second copy of 'john henry days'.

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 27 March 2004 16:58 (twenty-two years ago)

it's fantastic. i like it much better than john henry days, which i thought had some amazing chapters but didn't hang together well overall.

― lauren (laurenp), Saturday, 27 March 2004 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Connie Willis is good for plane rides.

― adam (adam), Saturday, 27 March 2004 21:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I really think a good mystery novel is great for flying, so I'll give you Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr, which is a trilogy of detective novels set in Berlin in the years 1936, 1938, and 1947. Very readable, very intelligent, and rather intricate in their mysteries.

― Gear! (Gear!), Saturday, 27 March 2004 21:17 (twenty-two years ago)

henry fielding 'tom jones'
carlos fuentes 'a change of skin'

― Ian Johnson (orion), Saturday, 27 March 2004 21:20 (twenty-two years ago)

rule of the bone - russell banks
jerome k. jerome - 3 men in a boat/3 men on the bummel

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Saturday, 27 March 2004 21:33 (twenty-two years ago)

At the risk of cliche, my favourite travel book is The Great Shark Hunt. It's like a journalism bible, full of great reporting from before HST overdid the drugs.

― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Saturday, 27 March 2004 21:37 (twenty-two years ago)

The Patrick O'Brian series, I'm not sure how long they'd take you since I haven't read any in one go but they tend to be 4-500 pages and are quite good.

― Maria (Maria), Saturday, 27 March 2004 22:10 (twenty-two years ago)

To Say Nothing of the Dog (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553575384/) -quite funny & engaging. It got me through a roundtrip flight from seattle to NJ a few weeks ago. Also, I read Le Carré on a few flights- he's not humorous, but he writes so well that the books make long flights fly by.

― lyra (lyra), Sunday, 28 March 2004 00:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Flights are a good excuse to read classics, for me.

Perhaps one of the best Daniel Defoe novels--"Moll Flanders" is probably the most fun (I may like "Roxana" better, actually, but I would read "Moll Flanders" first), and I have very fond memories of sitting down to read the beginning of "Robinson Crusoe" and looking up and realizing that eight hours had passed. The guy could TELL A STORY.

Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" is 1100 pages long and almost totally unputdownable. Bonus: the Oxford paperback is small, reasonably light, and 13 bucks.

For a palate-cleanser, perhaps a poetry anthology? I've given Jerome Rothenberg's "Technicians of the Sacred" (an anthology of poetry from the oral tradition all over the world) as a present to several friends, although it's very much to some people's tastes and not at all to others'--flip through a little of it and see if it's your kind of thing.

― Douglas (Douglas), Sunday, 28 March 2004 01:27 (twenty-two years ago)

'Memoirs of a Geisha'

― luna (luna.c), Sunday, 28 March 2004 01:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I read that book on the plane to Japan :)

― A Nairn (moretap), Sunday, 28 March 2004 01:47 (twenty-two years ago)

But I liked "36 views of Mount Fuji" That'd probably be a better one for your flight to Japan.

― A Nairn (moretap), Sunday, 28 March 2004 01:51 (twenty-two years ago)

On my way to Japan many years ago I read Learning To Bow by Bruce Feiler. It's about his experience as an English teacher in rural Japan. It's good but quick.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Sunday, 28 March 2004 01:58 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm planning to read a good chunk of don quixote on my flight to new zealand. i'm about a tenth of the way through it so far, but it reads surprisingly quickly. be sure to get the burton raffel translation.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 28 March 2004 05:31 (twenty-two years ago)

i hate to admit it, but nick hornby novels. or martin amis. specifically, high fidelity, about a boy, and the rachel papers. this isn't from experience, but i think middlemarch would be good, too. i read it in the hospital.

― youn, Sunday, 28 March 2004 05:43 (twenty-two years ago)

The Manuscript Found in Zaragoza and The Good Soldier Svejk are classic examples of involved non-English language European novels that are huge, convoluted and make for great reading.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 March 2004 05:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Lauren already recommended most of mine (Middlesex, The Intuitionist, Kavalier and clay--which I will probably finish on my next long flight in a few weeks) but I'll add: The Moonstone and others by Wilkie Collins. Early mystery novels, atmospheric, absorbing, long enough but not too long.

― sgs (sgs), Sunday, 28 March 2004 08:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I bet some Murakami novels would be good. He's very easy to read, but I bet The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle would last you a good while on a flight.

― jaymc (jaymc), Sunday, 28 March 2004 08:47 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.