Flying the readerly skies

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I think planes may be our last reading rooms.

If you can judge by the people sitting around me on my flights yesterday, that is. Last night, as others dozed in the darkened cabin, my row kept our lights on and read.

At the window: a tall gray-haired man reading a hardback on personal finance. Middle seat: a middle-aged woman with a hefty romance novel. Me, I was working on my laptop; I’d finished the novel and two short story collections in my bag.

The woman across the aisle from me was reading a magazine. She got to the end and then, apparently with nothing else to read, paged back through it slowly, scrutinizing every advertisement. She seemed to want words to fill the airplane ride. I felt bad for her -- I had a surplus of words with me. Should I offer her one of my books -- a short story collection, maybe? What if she was content re-reading her magazine? Eventually I left her to the pharmaceutical disclaimers, deciding that her reading material was none of my business.

On my earlier flight, the guy next to me pulled a worn, spine-cracked John Grisham thriller from his pocket. Its bookmark was a faded boarding pass from another airline; the last time he’d read it, it seemed, was when he was on a plane.

Maybe all we need to do to boost American reading rates is to give everyone free plane tickets.

Carolyn Kellogg