MrTemporal

When I travel I like to take some light reading along.

In the past few years I have been reading the adventures of Stone Barrington the former detective now lawyer who gets money shoveled his way by all sorts of acquaintances, old and new. "Stone, I've only known you for 5 minutes but I need a lawyer to handle a purchase in upstate New York. Will a $500,000 retainer be sufficient?" And, he never has to sleep alone since beautiful women always want to get him into bed. "Stone, I just met you at this party, how about we go to my place for more drinks and I will make you breakfast in the morning." And if Stone gets to bored he always can engage in playfull banter with his lifelong friend Dino the NY city detective "Stone, would you like to meet my friend Don Alberto, the former mobster now on the board of every charity in town? He has money and a beautiful daughter he wants to marry off?" What a life!

These books have been described by others as "popcorn for the mind".

In any event I am running out of Stone Barrington stories to read and am looking for other similar light reading. Nothing heavy, nothing gory, just light reading that keeps one interested enough to want to continue reading rather than watch that little screen attached to the seat in front of me.

What popcorn for the mind do you recommend on a long flight?

lhrsfo

If you are looking for recommendations, I suggest you head over to Amazon and check out its "If you like this, then try that" feature.

bitburgr

Alot of what I buy for plane / train rides is on the $5.95 / $6.95 shelves at Barnes & Noble.

Light reading, somewhat implausible story lines, just enough plot twists. If I like an author enough, I'll look for more by him / her.

ETA: did you see this thread? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...u-reading.html

SanDiego1K

I call Stone Barrington books comic books for men. Clive Cussler is also of similar light, engaging ilk. My husband enjoys both as frothy escapist reading.

Qwkynuf

When I ran out of the Stone Barrington series, I also enjoyed the Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler (also his "Oregon Files" series), The "Prey" series by John Sandford (Rules of Prey, etc), the sequels to those, following one of the characters - Virgil Flowers, the Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, and the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child.

All are basically "Brain Novocain", but they are fun, easy reads which are in a similar vein.

Zooter

"What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" by the author of the xkcd comic is perfect popcorn-style reading. Each "chapter" is only a few pages, giving a fun explanation of what would really happen in absurd situations, like what would happen if the Earth suddenly stopped rotating.

https://www.amazon.com/What-If-Scien.../dp/0544272994

MrTemporal

Lots of good suggestions.

It looks like I need to fly more so as to catch up on all this reading. :-)

KRSW

I always can find something fun to read from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...usual_articles. Many times reading something on there will inspire me to dig deeper, often buying books related to the topic I just read.

Sadly, medical & scientific journals make up much of my airtime reading. I probably need to get out more often.

Gringa

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson if you're even the tiniest bit an Anglophile or actually anything by Bill Bryson. But Notes is a book I found hysterically funny.

scruffy

Lots of fascinating reading there. For offline reading, Wikipedia's Book Creator (tutorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books ; disregard the "The Book Creator software has been crippled" warning) can make PDFs of collections of articles. The Wikipedia:Unusual articles in the Places and infrastructure category make a 27 mb, 362-page PDF.

LostInAmerica

While not as contemporary, the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell fit well into this category. British soldier during the Napoleon wars. Easy reads.

MoreMilesPlease

Look at the Blanco County series by Ben Rehder.

Funny, funny light reading. https://benrehder.wordpress.com/

He's done a few others not as popcorn but tHe Blanco County series is a go to favortite for entertaining light reading. Billy Don and Red make every book worthwhile.

Doc Savage

Check out this venerable thread for many, many suggestions from FTers:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...u-reading.html

StartinSanDiego

I like Clive Clusser for a light read. He gets repetitive, so I space those books out with several years between reads. I enjoy Donald E. Westlake's books like "Drowned Hopes," which is light and wickedly funny. I also enjoy Carl Hiaasen's mysteries, which always have very funny twists and turns in the murder plot and a bend towards environmental issues. He wrote the teen classic "Hoot," which was made into a movie.

I'm prone to swing by the library and grab a few 10 cent books off the used book rack. I've learned about many new authors that way, and simply jettison the book where ever I finish reading it. I've got some of my best books in the "take one, leave one" racks at hotels during my travels. I recently got "March" and "All the Light You Cannot See" as hotel lobby swaps. Both Pulitzer Prize winners, neither a light read, but great and haunting books.

Gringa

I'm sure it's a good thread but I can't get in to read it.