16 March 2017

Antipodean Flights

Choosing your book.

By Chin Chin

Normally a visit to a bookshop is something to look forward to, the pleasant smell of bindings, a chat about the latest literary trend and then a couple of volumes to enjoy or give away.  When could that be anything other than enjoyable?  When you are contemplating a 24 hour flight back from New Zealand, and trying to select reading material for the trip, that’s when.

It would be all right if you could take a small library, of course; say a couple of novels, a biography or two and maybe something on political economy; but that would weigh a ton and, if you are travelling economy, the hand luggage will already be full of stuff you could not fit into your suitcase.  More to the point, you have been sounding on about how one book is quite enough for the strong-minded, so to be seen with two or more would have disagreeable connotations.

Of course spending 24 hours with a single companion is not, of itself, a hardship.  Even those who are unmarried do it reasonably often, and no one can deny that a 24 hour trip up a stream with a good friend and a fishing rod is as pleasant a diversion as the human race can devise.  Why then should the company of a single author be so daunting?  The trouble is that it is just too close; there is little else to do but read unless either you like airline food (improbable) or you have 20:20 ears which can render into English the incomprehensible noises which come out of the plane’s entertainment system.  Most of the flight then will be spent with the book, so it is important to think carefully about what you want from it before you make your choice.

First, a don’t.  Remember that even if you are travelling alone there will be people next to you.  You might think that you would be more relaxed if you read Fifty Shades of Grey, but that will not necessarily be the case if you are seated next to a tough-looking orthodox rabbi or a bearded man who looks like a suicide bomber.  If you really have to read something which is not quite respectable, put it in a false binding – perhaps borrowed from some weighty classical tome.  The thought of concealing a book of naughty photographs inside a cover which proclaims it to be the sermons of John Knox has certain attractions, but it is probably better to avoid that sort of book altogether.

It isn’t just your neighbours you have to think of as you make your choice.  There is the Almighty as well.  We all know that flying is one of the safest ways of travelling, but things can go wrong and there is precious little time for repentance if they do.  Basically you are stuck with whatever you were doing at the time.  It is not given to us to understand the exact procedure when one is weighed in the scales before the Eternal Throne, but it might look better to have died perusing the lives of the Saints than with your nose buried in the latest bodice-ripper.

Almighty (to Peter): “And what did you say he was reading?”

Peter: “Saucey Sal and the Randy Pirate.”

Almighty: “Well, I may be all-seeing but I don’t think I have perused that one yet.  How many points do you think we should score it?”

Peter: “It should probably cancel out the credit for those four hours of hymn singing last week.”

And there you would be with your score all in ruins just when you needed it most.

So should it be the Gospels or the stories of the Saints?  Whichever way you go there is still a danger.  The Christian religion expects its followers to have moments of doubt.  What if the doubters are right and you have set out to please entirely the wrong deity?  There you would be, smugly noticing that one of the acolytes was carrying your copy of the life of St George, when there would be a great roaring sound.

“Prostrate yourself before the Divine Dragon” would shout the acolyte.

“What was he reading?” would ask the Dragon.  Oops, boiling oil for eternity.

No, best keep clear of religious books, but that doesn’t mean that serious books are out of the question.  There are two ways of approaching matters.  You can regard the flight as an opportunity to force your way through some improving book which you feel you should have read, A Brief History of Time for example.  That sounds splendid and resolute, just what one would expect from a Shaw Sheet reader.  The trouble is that as you read chapter 7 for the twentieth time and realise that you still cannot understand it, the next twenty hours or so could loom rather large.  Perhaps if you cannot understand it, you could simply learn the whole book by rote.

The second possibility is to regard the book as an instrument for wasting time in a fairly painless manner.  I am not sure how that measures against the sin of sloth but it is certainly a traditional role of fiction.  For this you need a book with a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter so that you feel impelled to keep reading; a Dickens or a Jack Higgins would be perfect.  Very good reading, of course, but rather a self-indulgent approach.

Hang on though, could you not have it both ways, a book full of entertaining derring-do which teaches you something useful as you go along?  Rider Haggard’s Zulu trilogy would teach you some history.  So too would Bernard Cornwall’s books on the Peninsular War.  There is plenty of choice if you prefer science fiction or action in weird geographical formations.  Then there are the self-serving memoirs of defunct politicians.  They too place fiction in a factual background.  There is an added advantage there as well.  Most of them have an anaesthetic effect which will put you to sleep every time you pick them up.  So you won’t have to read them at all.

 

If you enjoyed this article please share it using the buttons above.

Please click here if you would like a weekly email on publication of the ShawSheet