What are some good books for long plane rides?

Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. It’s relatively short to read, and fun as all hell. Beware thy sanity.

I think that the three-volume Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson ought to last you all of those flights. Good reads, but rather long.

On my last flight, I took an anthology of fairytales with me. I prefer to have short stories for the plane and save novels for downtown in hotel rooms.

Have you read any of Murakami’s other books? I’m reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and love it so far (highly recommend it.. but I can’t imagine a Murakami reader who hasn’t looked into his other novels.)

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is a favorite of many of my friends who travel a lot… it’s long and really good. highly recommend.

@jerv I loved the Baroque Cycle. And Cryptonomicon. What else have you liked in that vein? I ask because I’ve had some trouble getting through Anathem.

@muppetish Like many, I’m a total Murakami fanboy. After Dark was the final one I hadn’t read.

@Samantha_Rae Thanks for the rec for Shantaram. I’ve flipped through that one before, it looks like it would be great.

@Mamradpivo Gotcha ;) It might be a long-shot, but I’m completely in love with the writings of Annie Dillard right now. Her every word is poetry to me – I have never read non-fiction quite like it.

The Big Short (about the financial crisis), Prey (the same author who wrote Jurassic Park), and the Broken Window (same author who wrote the Bone Collecter).

@Mamradpivo Anathem is a bit tricky, and the last third of it still has my brain in knots. (Damn you, Fraa Jad!) Neal’s other works are good but short enough (standard paperback sized) that you may finish one per flight if you read as fast as I do.

For long reads, I have also enjoyed The Illuminatus! Trilogy, the first three books of the Hitchhikers Guide… “trilogy” (now six books) and the Discworld series, which has enough books to qualify as a long read. Of those, only The Illuminatus! Trilogy is really complex like Neal Stephenson; the others are light entertainment.

This is not an easy fun read (like bringing these types of books on holidays) but my all time favorite long distance travel read is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. For a long time, I was too intimidated by the size of the book to take it off the shelf. I brought it with me on a backpacking trip to India and it the long plane trip fly by. I found it totally engrossing and did not put it down. It is now #1 on my best books list.

I can’t think of a book book, right now must be getting tired. Buy yourself a crossword puzzle book. They are fun. Times flies for me.

Highly recommended.

@zen_ ; Are you working on commission?

Me, I would take a large collection of sci-fi short stories.

White Fang
The call of the wild
Wolves of he beyond lone wolf

Everyone, THANK YOU! I’m flying to Brazil soon, and then home from Peru, and I didn’t want to have to take my entire library! ;0)