Summer Reading: Airports

This post came about for two reasons: I went to Sacramento, and I read Sarah Vowell. I didn't do those things at the same time. I read Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot a few years ago, and something she said about airport reading stuck in my head: "My airport reading material--a novelization of Gettysburg here, a Lyndon Johnson biography there--always receives an approving glance from whatever middle-aged man on my flight is perusing the new Stephen Ambrose book, because every domestic flight requires a middle-aged man with a Stephen Ambrose book in his carry-on luggage--it's an FAA regulation." The lesson I took from this comment? Not to read more Stephen Ambrose but that people notice what you read. Lest you think this is a paranoic tendency, Wired magazine published this article which says that what you read is one of the things airline screeners notice last year.

I had this notion, a sort of "you are what you read" aphorism, in mind when I packed for my trip. I was connecting through the San Francisco airport where I knew I could find a good bookstore, Compass Books. I planned on buying a book in SFO. But I needed to have something else to read in the airport and on the plane before SFO. I tried to be reasonable. Usually, I weigh down my carry-on with 2-3 books because, let's face it, these days, I might be stranded in the airport for decades. However, my flights were short and my trip was relatively short and busy. One good book, purchased in San Francisco, would suffice.

In my local airport's small shop, I was faced with a wide selection of glossy magazines and a few shelves of mostly romance/thriller paperbacks. I bought a magazine (No, not US, the Atlantic). So far so good, but what about a book? The hardbacks looked interesting, but they were hardback, and I was trying to avoid buying anything weighty until Compass Books in San Francisco. Based on that criteria, I wound up purchasing Tina Brown's Diana Chronicles.


I have to admit that I spent the rest of my journey holding the poor book open as wide as possible, so as to obscure the spine and cover. I have no idea what Homeland Security and middle-aged Ambrose readers think of me. But I have to admit, Tina Brown is a good writer: she knows her subject, and she has a wicked, pointed turn of phrase at times that cuts through all of the clutter surrounding her subject. I also have to admit that I didn't buy a hardback after all. With my layover cut short, I grabbed Elizabeth Hind's Generation Loss in paperback. You can read Bookslut's review, which is an excellent summary of the novel's achievments and flaws, here.

Happy Reading!