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sdbecque's review against another edition
4.0
So I know I'm probably one of few people who read Schaberg's other book on airports - [b:The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight|17384095|The Textual Life of Airports Reading the Culture of Flight|Christopher Schaberg|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1361210550s/17384095.jpg|24183780] - recently in fact because I was writing about the representation of airports, and I happened upon this new book at the library without knowing it was being released. This is a follow-up to that book that delves deeper into Schaberg's personal experiences working at the Bozeman airport while in graduate school. That last sentence ought to give you a pretty good hunch if this book is right for you, either that kind of rumination sounds intriguing or it doesn't. To me, hearing his ruminations about airport work buttressed up next to quotes from Barthes and Foucault is a good way to spend a Saturday, but your mileage may vary. This does less with the textual culture of flight than the last book does too, so if you are interested in airports, then that might be the textual airport book you want.
sherif's review
2.0
I love airports and I love aviation. This is not a good book for you if that's what you're here for. This is a good book for you if you are interested in literary analysis and metaphor when focused on one topic, where the topic in this case just happens to be airports.
There is some discussion about the author's job at an airport back in the day, the waning of airports as a place for exciting travel and leisure, and the fact that they've become ordinary and tiring places almost no one feels good about being at anymore. There is also some nostalgia about aircraft models that seemed new one day only to be retired and replaced by new ones that feel new until they also get retired.
There is some discussion about that. Unfortunately it's buried under too much forced literary references and opaque and mysterious language that sometimes just doesn't mean anything. Anything can mean anything of course, if you squint hard enough. But at some point, the squinting is you imbuing the statement with whatever meaning you have in mind, and it becomes very hard for you to know what the statement actually means, if the author actually meant something at all by it. If you're into that kind of thing, then this book might be for you. If you're looking for genuine, insightful, and straight to the point discussion of the history and future of airports, this will be disappointing.
See the spoiler tag for quotes/examples of statements you'll find in the book.
Each page has a statement at the bottom, intended by the author to motivate rumination and meditation on the meaning of it. Examples:
"Airports are at once necessary and impossible."
"Airports seemed to us at first only enigmatic transition zones for definite physical acts."
Here is a quote I find representative of the nature of the book:
"Reading about this incident, among conjectures and speculations about what caused the structural failure, I was struck by a particular comment: reader OrlandoPBM quipped, 'These jet bridges sometimes have a life of their own.' What could this possibly mean? Certainly the author of this comment did not mean it literally – and yet, there is a mystery worth tarrying with here, a specter of autonomy and agency.
What if we were to take this curious insight seriously: that each jet bridge has a life of its own?..."
I do not think there is a mystery worth tarrying with here.
I did choose strong examples of the literary and verbose nature of the writing. My point is to demonstrate that this book is aimed towards readers more interested in literary analysis and references rather than readers purely interested in the history and nerdy details of aviation.
Even when it comes to the literature angle, many of the metaphors the author draws between airports and "life" don't seem that unique to airports.
There is some discussion about the author's job at an airport back in the day, the waning of airports as a place for exciting travel and leisure, and the fact that they've become ordinary and tiring places almost no one feels good about being at anymore. There is also some nostalgia about aircraft models that seemed new one day only to be retired and replaced by new ones that feel new until they also get retired.
There is some discussion about that. Unfortunately it's buried under too much forced literary references and opaque and mysterious language that sometimes just doesn't mean anything. Anything can mean anything of course, if you squint hard enough. But at some point, the squinting is you imbuing the statement with whatever meaning you have in mind, and it becomes very hard for you to know what the statement actually means, if the author actually meant something at all by it. If you're into that kind of thing, then this book might be for you. If you're looking for genuine, insightful, and straight to the point discussion of the history and future of airports, this will be disappointing.
See the spoiler tag for quotes/examples of statements you'll find in the book.
Each page has a statement at the bottom, intended by the author to motivate rumination and meditation on the meaning of it. Examples:
"Airports are at once necessary and impossible."
"Airports seemed to us at first only enigmatic transition zones for definite physical acts."
Here is a quote I find representative of the nature of the book:
"Reading about this incident, among conjectures and speculations about what caused the structural failure, I was struck by a particular comment: reader OrlandoPBM quipped, 'These jet bridges sometimes have a life of their own.' What could this possibly mean? Certainly the author of this comment did not mean it literally – and yet, there is a mystery worth tarrying with here, a specter of autonomy and agency.
What if we were to take this curious insight seriously: that each jet bridge has a life of its own?..."
I do not think there is a mystery worth tarrying with here.
I did choose strong examples of the literary and verbose nature of the writing. My point is to demonstrate that this book is aimed towards readers more interested in literary analysis and references rather than readers purely interested in the history and nerdy details of aviation.
Even when it comes to the literature angle, many of the metaphors the author draws between airports and "life" don't seem that unique to airports.
michaelnlibrarian's review
3.0
Odd book. The author wrote a sort of academic look at airports in literature in popular culture while this is more personal (as he explains in the introduction). The first half is drawn from a period when he worked at an airport himself and the second half is just random airport related stuff. The way it is written, you can stop and start reading more or less anywhere - if you aren't engaged, you can move on.
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