Bibliophile

by e. nork, blog writer

This blog post is brought to you from the void-like throes of irreconcilable jetlag.

I’ve just returned from having spent a week in Shanghai on a school trip (side note: shepherding 70 teenagers around O’Hare without losing any of them or their luggage is no easy feat) and while my time in the city was educational and unbelievably fun I did find myself by my return home with an unrelated approximate mastery of a seemingly insurmountable difficulty that plagues every bibliophilic traveler: what, and how, to read on a plane.

I’ve gathered that the reason picking books to read on long plane rides is sometimes nearly impossible is that there is no worse boredom than anticipated boredom, and deciding on books to read requires that you place yourself mentally into your future tired, uncomfortable, and under-stimulated state exclusive to sitting in the middle seat for a fourteen-and-a-half hour flight. You, the theoretical prospective traveler, have to ask yourself: what will keep me sane until I can fall asleep? Ideally, of course, you could bring your whole library, and occupy yourself indefinitely with your favorites, that collection of books you’ve bought but still haven’t read yet, and the entire Harry Potter series for good measure. However, as of course you know, you are limited to one carry-on and one personal item and unless you have a Kindle and unlimited money the contemporary Library of Alexandria cannot fit in the overhead compartment. Alas, you have to make some decisions.

In my experience, picking one book from each of the following categories will serve you well in your travels: books that are complex and sometimes difficult to read, books that may not be very complicated but are pleasant and entertaining regardless, and books that are outside the realm of fiction, be it a great memoir or a slim volume of haikus about birds. The first section serves to satisfy you intellectually while you chew your hollow ice cubes out of an unnecessarily small plastic cup, mulling over the meaning of human existence and the last remnants of your ginger ale. The second will keep you occupied for a few hours, depending on how quickly you can read YA sentence structure, and as any international traveller knows, a few hours knocked off the estimated time until arrival can mean the resurrection and maintenance of your invaluable sanity. The third is a break from the former two, a nice parenthetical endeavor perfect for the short period between naps or hour-long layovers.

More importantly, however, choose books that you’ll forever want to associate with their accompanying voyage. I cannot recall Slaughterhouse-Five without remembering puddle-jumping between regional airports in South Africa, working through Walden en route to Munich, and, most recently, finishing Sirens of Titan on the flight home from Shanghai and, still turning it over, fell asleep for five hours. When you finally return home, these books will remain testaments to simultaneous physical and literary journeys.

As a final note and public service announcement, I would like to publicly affirm my opinion that the author whose works are the absolute best to read on any sort of journey, long or short, physical or otherwise, will eternally be Kurt Vonnegut.

#enork #misc