I like to read on a plane flight.
The more engrossing and interesting the book, the better.
I don’t care if it’s fiction or nonfiction as long as it captures my attention and makes that in-flight time pass quickly.
That’s particularly important as COVID recedes but we still have to wear a mask.
It can be tricky to find the right book for any trip. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
4 perfect books for a summer plane flight
Into Thin Air
I started Jon Krakauer’s blockbuster book Into Thin Air on a plane flight from Los Angeles to Oakland, California.
A personal account of Krakauer’s experiences on Mt. Everest in 1996, Into Thin Air describes the chaos, confusion, and heroics of so many on Mt. Everest during a disastrous climbing year.
On assignment for a magazine, Krakauer documented his own hike and told a harrowing story.
Really, the heroes were the Sherpas hauling all those westerners and their gear to the summit of the world’s highest mountain.
I’m not a mountaineer and I’m leery of heights, but Krakauer’s writing and the story itself, kept me riveted.
Unfortunately for me, the plane flight for once wasn’t long enough.
Haunted because I didn’t know the ending, I stayed up way too late once I returned home to finish the book!
The Boys in the Boat
I read The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown on a plane flight from San Francisco to El Paso, Texas.
With two relatives rowing crew at UC Berkeley, I wanted to learn more about their world. This nonfiction story of the 1936 US Olympic crew team kept me riveted the entire trip.
Engrossing personalities, dramatic events, and showing up Hitler all resulted in a story I couldn’t stop reading.
I normally walk during a layover, but not this time. I sat glued to my airport seat taking in all the details and drama.
As we landed in El Paso, I reached the last page and closed the book with a sigh.
What a splendid story!
Code Name Verity
I picked up Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein at the library for a plane flight from San Francisco to Chicago.
A total innocent as I opened the cover, I didn’t know what to expect of this “fiendishly plotted,” WWII story.
I didn’t really like the first four chapters and considered forgetting the whole thing, except I didn’t have anything else to read.
So, somewhere over Nevada, I sighed and continued reading.
Except, events didn’t quite make sense.
Somewhere over northeastern Colorado, my eyes widened and I gasped.
As we landed in O’Hare, I reached the shocking, satisfying, enlightening conclusion.
Returning to the first pages, I started over again.
And finished a reread way too late that night at our hotel.
Unreliable narrator, anyone?
(For a similar shocking, satisfying, let’s start all over again novel, try Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. Unfortunately, to finish that book in one flight, you’d probably have to fly all the way around the world!)
Blind Descent
Nevada Barr’s books tell the stories of Anna Pigeon, a national park ranger.
On another flight, this time home from El Paso to San Francisco, I reread this novel after hiking in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico.
Barr, of course, set Blind Descent in Carlsbad Caverns, more particularly a “wild” cavern without lights or other amenities.
Since we had hiked a “wild” cavern the day before–led by a guide and wearing trusty headlamps with new batteries–I’d survived the experience.
But “experiencing it again,” through Anna Pigeon’s life proved almost more than I could stomach.
Riveting and exciting, I’m glad I read it coming home rather than flying to!
Other notable plane flight books
Cuba— was the title of a fat history of the island my father read on a Los Angeles to Miami flight in the early 1960s. The nervous flight attendant finally approached him to ask if he was planning to hijack the plane–other travelers were nervous.
The Witch of Blackberry Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. This wonderful story of colonial Connecticut caught my 10-year-old’s imagination and she read the whole book on our flight to New Zealand. (When she wasn’t watching Lilo and Stitch seven times.)
The four children spent the rest of the trip reading all the Harry Potter books–which were practically the only books for sale in 2002 New Zealand.
This summer’s flight reads?
For a May flight, San Francisco to Seattle, I read most of Patricia Raybon’s upcoming All That is Secret. An unusual tale of a Black theology woman professor solving a murder in 1920s Denver, it kept me guessing!
For a flight later this summer across the country, I already have my chosen novel: Amanda Dykes’ newest Yours is the Night. Five hours should fly by with Dykes’ splendid writing and storytelling. I can hardly wait to fly!
What are some great books you’ve read while traveling through the air?
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