Top 10 Airport Reads

In Nature Girl, Carl Hiaasen has served us a silly, sweaty, sex-filled slapstick romp through the everglades with the endearingly nutty Honey Santana. This imaginative tale of modern manners and the lack thereof won't hang with you much after the last word, but will keep you entertained through security lines and flight delays.

You think dealing with airplane turbulence is rough? Imagine being unwillingly thrust through time and landing at another point in your life completely naked and ravishingly hungry. The main character in Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife has a genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time. This intelligent love story will lock your attention as you travel via more conventional means.

If you want a book that will keep the pages turning but has a little more meat than your average thriller, check out One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson.

A lot of travel, especially during the holidays, takes people back to their childhood homes. In The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson lets us travel home with him to his life in 1950s middle America. Bryson's writing is polished and funny, and will make your wait in the airport (or time with family) more enjoyable.

Nora Roberts' straight-to-mass-market-paperback Circle Trilogy was never billed as great literature, but it is fast, entertaining and has the right amount of wish fulfillment for those travelers who can use a little "happily ever after" to make them forget the stresses of reality. Be sure to throw the second two books in the trilogy--Dance of the Gods and Valley of Silence-- in your bag as well. You will want to devour one after the other.

If you have not already gotten caught up in Potter mania, but you're still curious about what all the hype is about, a trip is a great excuse to pack a Harry Potter book and try it out. With adventure, conflict and romance, the Potter books provide the opportunity to get lost in a book while you wait in the airport.

Freakonomics is a good airport choice for A) The intelligent traveller who wants to learn something new without reading something heavy, B) The traveler who wants to look intelligent (you never know who you'll meet in the airport), C) Someone who prefers nonfiction or D) Someone who wants a book that reads like a series of articles, so that it can be read in spurts.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a good story, and you can't go wrong packing a good story. The Memory Keeper's Daughter starts on a snowy night in 1964 when a doctor delivers his own twins and discovers that one of them, the daughter, has been born with Downs Syndrome. In a hasty decision, he gives the daughter to a nurse to take to an institution and tells his wife the baby died. The nurse raises the daughter as her own. If this premise intrigues you, pick up the book. It is very well written.

The Guy Not Taken is a well-written collection of short stories about sympathetic characters. Fans of Jennifer Weiner’s previous works, including bestsellers like Good in Bed and In Her Shoes will find much to admire in these stories, which deal with women, relationships, families, and emotional struggles.