inthelouvre.org

May 1, 2008

Today’s Booking Through Thursday question is: Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

So I was grocery shopping when I got the call and had nothing with me but my wallet and passport (even though none of my family live outside the country and my passport is expired), and for some reason I didn’t even have my purse which always has some kind of reading or writing material in it. I can’t imagine going anywhere without that, even hypothetically, because I feel “naked” without it on my arm while I’m in public. (I’m also not sure why I don’t have my cell phone, since I just got a phone call. Perhaps, hypothetically, it is implanted in my brain, in which case I’m not sure where the issues of flying come in since I don’t know how to turn this new device to “flight mode.” Will the plane crash? Will my brain explode? I guess I’ll just have to find out.) But! Okay, so I’m sitting in an aiport feeling naked.

Well, the obvious solution is that I’ll grab a book from the airport bookstore. I’ve been trying to expand my reading horizons lately - I used to stick merely to “literary fiction” and historical novels, but this past few months I’ve read historical romance, mystery (a genre which I’ve come to love), more non-fiction (I read a lot of non-fiction in school, of course, but I’m not known to read it for pleasure), paranormal romance, and horror. Next on my list is a bit of time-travel, contemporary romance, and non-historical non-fiction because, come on, that’s cheating.

So perhaps I get up off my butt and march straight to the airport bookstore to pick up some mainstream fiction, or something like Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert about which I’ve heard nothing but good things. Perhaps I’ll even look into some James Patterson, because although I have never read any more than a single chapter (2 pages), I have nonetheless made it my mission to hate him for life. If all else fails, I guess I’d pick up Danielle Steele, because apparently everyone reads Danielle Steele.

Now to address the possibility that this question is meant to convey that there are no airport bookstores, that I’m sitting in the lobby waiting for my plane to arrive next to someone who is loudly snoring, sniffling, and threatening to put his feet too close for comfort, and there is no acceptable redemption from the situtation. In this case, I’d bide my time looking out the tall glass window-walls for glimpses of airplanes, traffic directors, luggage transporters, and the occassional official on important business. I am easy to please and since childhood have found the ongoings of an airport to be utterly fantastic. I wouldn’t fidget or complain, and I wouldn’t use the time to text message or telepathically contact any friends. I’d be content with the airplanes.

Reading other responses, I see that people would be too distracted by the hypothetical tragedy to worry about what to read or what to do, but personally, I require distraction while I wait. I’ve been in this situation several times recently (though I had time to pack, among other things, a laptop computer and several books) and have found that it does no good to sit in an airport and worry. That time would be better spent in another world following someone else’s story.