You may have noticed the Big Brother Book Club was missing last week. Your faithful spy went out of the country. But never fear, book lovers, for luckily there is no better place for people watching than the international airport system.
A middle-aged woman who shared our row on the first flight spent three hours putting a death grip on the arm rest and her copy of Ice Bound . We had to pull some tricky maneuvering to catch sight of 2666 while waiting in the line for customs. It had been a while since we’ve spotted Bolano.
We still don’t get the appeal of reading about old ships, but clearly the guy sprawled out at our departure gate did since he was really into The Battleship Bismark . We were disappointed to find it wasn’t written by that Jack Bower… that would have been much cooler.
Waiting in line at the airport bookstore we caught sight of The Monk , and immediately had to reevaluate our book purchases. The copy of Baby Proof in line in front of us didn’t have quite the same effect, and we were confused by the fact that the buyer was obviously pregnant. (The book begins, “I never wanted to be a mother…”) We tried to keep an open mind as our travel partner bought Gone Bamboo , but we like Anthony Bourdain, so maybe we are being unfair by judging a book by its title.
We still haven’t gotten around to reading Pompeii , and it taunted us through half of our flight home as our seatmate was obviously enjoying it. And to tie things up nicely, once we finally returned to New York we smiled to see our city once more overrun with copies of a certain J.K. Rowling book, just in time for the movie.