Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Airports

I love airplane travel. I like that flying means I can visit family in Missouri after a two hour flight instead of a 16 hour car ride. I like that flying means more opportunity to visit far away places. And I really like airports. I like that they are distinct, yet exactly the same. I like people watching -- who are you? where are you going? why? are you excited to reach your destination? Airports are like little countries where time has stopped, a unique civilization with no permanent citizens. Perhaps an alternate dimension. Of course sometimes the best things about airplane travel become the most jarring. I can leave the Midwest where it's 11 degrees and sleeting outside, and find myself in North Carolina where it's a balmy 75 degrees. There's less time to process the change from one environment to another, and sometimes the arrival to your final destination is a bit like whiplash. I'm on vacation! BAM! Okay, back to the real world. No adjustment period. But ultimately, I wouldn't give it up (unless scientists invent transport devices ala Star Trek...then I'm all about that).

Here are a few books for when you're in the mood to travel the airways, or get stuck in an airport (descriptions from Goodreads);

Book of Blood and Shadow, by Robin Wasserman

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up.  When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love.  When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark. 

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead.  His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history…

Late one night, exploring her father’s library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters addressed ominously to ‘My dear and unfortunate successor’. Her discovery plunges her into a world she never dreamed of – a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s mysterious fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, by Jennifer E. Smith

Four minutes changes everything. Hadley Sullivan 17 misses her flight at JFK airport, is late to her father's second wedding in London with never-met stepmother. Hadley meets the perfect boy. Oliver is British, sits in her row. A long night on the plane passes in a blink, but the two lose track in arrival chaos. Can fate bring them together again

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