Well, I was still in the mood for rambling about books. In particular, the old-school idea of an “airport novel”.
Even though I’m still slowly making my way through Raymond Lee’s 2022 horror-thriller sequel “Zombiewood 2” at the time of writing in early March and trying to focus on reading horror fiction, I found myself ordering a second-hand late-2000s thriller novel online (“Hunter’s Moon” by Randy Wayne White) after seeing this random Youtube video about some of the hilariously fun-looking “action movie” pulp fiction that White wrote during the mid-1980s and seeing a cover of one of his more modern “Doc Ford” novels in it.
Something about the palm trees on it, an idealised rose-tinted retro version of Florida, intrigued me and I… ended up ordering a totally different book by him because it was cheaper (seriously, ever since I got back into novels in January, I’m astonished at how much book prices have shot up during the past 5-7 years…).
Anyway, seeing that style of 2000s thriller novel cover art, I ended up thinking about the old concept of the “Airport novel”. These were giant doorstopper-sized thriller, crime etc… novels that people bought at airports and read on long flights. Something like Matthew Reilly’s “Area 7” (2001) or Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” (2003) at a guess. And, despite only having ever been on two relatively short flights in my entire life (to and from Berlin in 2004), the whole idea of an “airport novel” intrigued me.
I think that it is mostly because of nostalgia. Allow me to explain.
Whilst Youtube shows footage of modern airport bookshops with fairly “respectable” fiction in them – trendy “booktok” books, ordinary modern fiction etc… – the whole point of an “airport novel” is that it was apparently enjoyably mindless pulp fiction that people read on long flights. In other words, not only was there an actual valid reason for the novels to be so long – but it also speaks to a pre-smartphone age when novels were actually something of a popular entertainment medium. And THIS is the nostalgic part 🙂
Because, yes, as someone in my mid-late thirties, I still vaguely remember the days when this was still a thing. The whole thing about novels being “sophisticated” and “trendy” things that people show off on social media in order to look and/or sound smart is a relatively recent thing.
Often, you’d just find a fun paperback novel with a cool cover by an author you haven’t heard of, or one by your favourite author, and just read it for fun. You’d take it with you on car journeys, read it late at night or whatever. No showing off, no “yearly reading goals” or whatever. It was just another entertainment medium like movies or videogames, but cheaper and more portable. Not to mention that it was also a very flexible medium which – unlike a film – you could enjoy for five minutes or two hours or whatever without a second thought.
Fact is, within my lifetime, novels were mindless entertainment. Something people actually read for fun. During my teenage years in the 2000s, you’d find all of these cool old 1980s horror novels in charity shops and second-hand shops, with gnarly painted cover art filled with bold colours and gloomy chiaroscuro lighting. Often, they were sensibly-priced as well.
At the time, there were also more modern doorstopper-sized thriller novels by people like Dan Brown, Lee Child etc…And there were also cool urban fantasy books (I only read them during the late 2010s, but I cannot recommend Jocelynn Drake’s “Dark Days” novels highly enough if you want a cool, action-packed “2000s gothic vampire” series) and stuff like that as well.
Yes, genre fiction is still a thing these days, but it’s slightly more overlooked. Like how hardback notebooks have gone from being cheap, utilitarian everyday things during the 2000s to being fancy expensive “journals” these days because everyone just uses smartphones instead, I sort of miss the days when novels were a bit less respectable. When they weren’t some fancy thing you showed off on social media, but were actually FUN. A portable piece of entertainment – designed to entertain – that was cheaper and easier to carry around than a Game Boy Advance, a PSP or a Nokia N-Gage.
Because, whilst its cool that novels are still a thing in 2025, I can’t help but feel that the medium was – ironically – in much better health when it was seen as being little different from a random DVD or a magazine or something like that. When, instead of being a slightly respectable niche hobby focused on short internet videos that often show off piles of books, cover art etc…. or only focus on the latest “trendy” books, it was just a random everyday thing that most people enjoyed now and then. THIS was the – relatively modern – heyday of fiction in my opinion.
And the whole idea of an “airport novel” perfectly encapsulates this idea. It hearkens back to a time before smartphones were popular, when someone might listen to Green Day or Evanescence or whatever on their cheap little off-brand MP3 player whilst reading this giant doorstopper of a thriller novel on a flight to some exciting destination or other. When there is nothing but blue skies and the top of the clouds out of the window. When no mobile phones ring. When there is just this giant, goofy paperback novel filled with drama, action and hilariously short chapters. One with a cheaply-printed cover with the author’s name in giant reflective letters, bought on a whim for less than a tenner at the airport.
There’s something uniquely nostalgic about this idea. About the whole idea of “Airport novels”. Artefacts from a pre-smartphone time where novels could just be mindless popular entertainment.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
