AIRPLANE BOOKS

A reader on BN.com recently called my book, “Murder on Ice: Enhanced Multimedia Edition,” a “trashy summer read type of book.”

The fact that she gave it a one-star review suggests she considers that a bad thing.

Except I have a confession to make: I love trashy summer read type books.

And I don’t limit my love just to the summer, either.

There was a period in my life (i.e. most of the late 1990s) when I spent a disproportionate amount of time on airplanes. I was working for ABC Sports (and later TNT) as a researcher for their television figure-skating broadcasts. Which meant that, every other week or so, I was off to France or Russia or Japan, either to cover a competition or to shoot an Up-Close-and-Personal profile of a skating star.

Here’s the thing, though: I hate airplanes. I hate the way they look, I hate the way they smell, I hate the way the seats feel and the food tastes and the windows never open right (this does beg the question of why I chose to write my 1988 contemporary romance for AVON, “Annie’s Wild Ride,” about pilots, but that’s a topic for another time). I can’t sleep on airplanes and, back in the dark ages, kids, Walkman batteries didn’t last long enough for you to listen to music all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.

So that only left reading. The sole thing that could distract me from my overall misery while on an airplane, was reading.

But, not just any reading. It had to be a book compelling enough to keep my attention and make a 22 hour international flight feel like a local hop.

When people would ask me my goals as an author, I would tell them it was to write “airplane books.”

Books that make flying less traumatic for the reader. (Granted, that’s not quite up there with Bringing Peace to the Middle East, but I was starting small…)

And for me, the best kind of airplane book was a “trashy, summer read type.”

Read more of my guest blog for Manic Readers at: http://manicreaders.com/blog/index.php/2012/05/airplane-books-with-alina-adams/