Entertainment

Whatever Gets You Through the Flight

The Books You Will Read on a Plane This Year

This is a short story about you. Your bags are packed. You’re at the airport. You’re tired, a little anxious. Heading off to wherever it is you call home for the holidays... And there’s a book sticking out of your briefcase. Something from the past year. Something engrossing. Transporting. Literary. Ish. You haven’t opened it yet, but you know that when you do, you’ll read it from start to finish in the exact* time it takes to arrive at your destination. How? Because you’ll have perused this very practical 2015 Holiday Travel Reading Guide first... *Not really at all, though.

K BY ME

A Mighty Intriguing Little Book

Flight time: One hour and 37 minutes.
The book: The Strange Case of Rachel K by Rachel Kushner.
The length: 96 pages.
What the person next to you will think: “Horses. Lingerie. I’m in.”
You’ll enjoy this if... You’re partial to loosely related short fictions that, taken together, make for a sexy, mythic, noir-ish mindf**k. Wow. That was oddly specific.

LOST AND FOUND

Look What Morrissey Hath Wrought

Flight time: Two hours and 46 minutes.
The book: List of the Lost by Morrissey.
The length: 118 pages.
What the person next to you will think: “Man, this person must really like Morrissey.”
You’ll enjoy this if... You’re such a devoted fan of Morrissey that you’re willing to disregard any failings with regard to plot, grammar and overall storytelling acumen.

SLADE TO REST

This One’s Haunted. Good Haunted.

Flight time: Four hours and five minutes.
The book: Slade House by David Mitchell.
The length: 256 pages.
What the person next to you will think: “Why have I heard of David Mitchell?”
You’ll enjoy this if... You’re into haunted houses and/or books that critics call “genre-defying.”

THE MARRIAGE PLOT

Here’s a Weighty Marital Drama

Flight time: Five hours and 32 minutes.
The book: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.
The length: 400 pages.
What the person next to you will think: We guess they’ll be wishing they brought a book this big on a five-hour-and-32-minute flight.
You’ll enjoy this if... You’ve ever dreamt of someone adapting the show The Affair into a novel.

PURITY RING

From the “Great American Novelist”

Flight time (round trip): Eight hours and 50 minutes.
The book: Purity by Jonathan Franzen.
The length: 576 pages.
What the person next to you will think: “Psh. Franzen. Psh.”
You’ll enjoy this if... You’re into marital strife, matters of personal privacy, 1980s Berlin or literary allusions to Great Expectations.

FIRE IT UP

That 944-Page Novel Everyone’s Talking About

Flight time: You’re delayed for, like, two full days.
The book: City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg.
The length: 944 pages.
What the person next to you will think: “Like you’ll actually ever finish that.”
You’ll enjoy this if... You’re not turned off by three-plus pounds of a mystery set in 1970s New York. Also: heavy lifting.