The New York Times has a story about reading on airplanes and airports.
From the piece...
I must credit George R. R. Martin with a salutary breakthrough in my reading habits, but I might just as easily credit (or blame) Sara Paretsky, or Patricia Cornwell, or P. D. James, or Sue Grafton, or Faye Kellerman, or John Mortimer. I’m just beginning to mainline the addictive Ruth Rendell.
This breakthrough came after years of piling up back issues of sobering magazines, hoarding clips on topics like “The Trouble in Galicia” or “Economic Peril Sets In” to read on the plane. After years of buying paperbacks of world classics, meaning to reacquaint myself with the stuff of college classes. After years of being tethered to my middle seat too near the lav, struggling distractedly through great prose, tough reporting, clear-minded thinking, biting analysis — and understanding nothing.
Instead of reading, I used to worry about how long a delay was going to last; fret over the awfulness of the dried-out sandwich that was meant to be dinner; gently shove back the head of a slumped stranger snoring on my shoulder; feel a miasma of germs settle around my head and travel up my nose, down my throat, into my eyes; imagine the incipient thrombosis that would clog my heart, just because I was too timid to ask two grumpy people to get up once again so I could walk down the aisle.
And then I finally found the literature that stands up to the tests of travel. The secret, dear reader, lies in narrative drive.
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