I am a flying fanatic and so really enjoyed this book. I have read that the author has also written more on the subject so I look forward to exploring more of his work.

Airportness by Christopher Schaberg is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in mid-September.

Oh, Airportness is instantly sensory - something about the way the author describes an airport and all the social rules attached to it cultivates a reader's memories with such precision. Whether or not I've been having claustrophic thoughts during the boarding process over the past few years, this book enables me to open my mind, to observe, and really be cognizant about the experiences we mutually share about flying. Absolute exemplary work.

This is Schaberg’s third book on airports. I get the feeling this volume is a compilation of bits and pieces left off of the earlier efforts. Recommended only if you are a fanatic about flying.

Christopher brings the reader from the sleepless night before flying until returning home.  He shares his observations at the airport from a recent trip. He opened my eyes to our airports. He tells some funny stories and made me think about the airport as a whole not just security and the gates.  I received a copy for an honest review.

All airports are alike, and yet each has its own unique eccentricities. Airport passengers live in a time separate from the outside world.  Airports have their own culture to which people must adapt, much as if you were in a foreign country. 
Such are the conclusions a reader will draw from Airportness, the latest book by Christopher Schaberg; the author of two previous books on the nature of airports. In this volume, Schaberg embarks on a round-trip, cross-county flight and ruminates on various aspects of his trip. 
It is hard to grasp for whom this book is intended. Potential patrons looking for practical advice will find no help here. Those hoping for a John McPhee style investigation will discover no interviews, no historical anecdotes, no statistics and no human interest angle. The book isn’t particularly funny, heartwarming or suspenseful. 
What we get instead, is a series of short, impressionistic essays, which would be fine if Schaberg’s insights weren’t so superficial and trite. We learn, for example, that the bathroom is the only place on a plane where there is privacy. They are tiny, and you can’t stay in one for long. We are also informed that seat armrests are uncomfortable and probably unnecessary. Schaberg reports that inflight magazines are tacky and full of advertising.  Airport restaurants are dirty, serve overpriced and bland tasting food. You do not need to read a book to learn these things. 
What is most disappointing about Airportness is the fact that the critical issues are left unaddressed. Only a passing mention is made of the disruptive TSA screenings and their questionable effectiveness.  The increasing reliance of our airline systems on computer software is not mentioned at all. A single glitch in a single program can shut an entire airport down for hours, leading to hundreds of cancellations. A domino effect can then result causing delays around the country. 
The vulnerability of our airports to cyberattacks or just incompetent programming should at least  rate a mention in a book like this. 
The author writes at some length about Denver International, but never mentions Blue Mustang, the terrifyingly ugly, 32 foot-tall equine, fiberglass sculpture with blazing red eyes that unnerves visitors. The fact that the artist, Luis Jimenez, was killed working on the sculpture when it toppled over on top of him gives the work an even more sinister aura. 
This is Schaberg’s third book on airports. I get the feeling this volume is a compilation of bits and pieces left off of the earlier efforts.  Recommended only if you are a fanatic about flying.

This book's topic was quite interesting, but I felt as if the author's style of writing detracted from the story. It was OK, but it felt a little too stream of consciousness at times and some good points were lost to minutiae. Still, I think a number of travelers would enjoy this detailed look on how all encompassing air travel has grown.

There is something about the routine and wonder of the flying process which like the author of this wonderful book I also have found of immense interest. The fear of oversleeping or the taxi not arriving to get you to the early morning flight ( you always wake up in time and the taxi is normally 5 minutes too early), The feeling of dread when you first look at the departures board to see if the flight has been cancelled or delayed ( again mostly it's at the scheduled time). This is followed by that sense of relief when you have checked in and have negotiated the airport security finally arriving in the departure area for that well earned cup of coffee and then go to have a look at those "exclusive to airport" books along with those books on how to succeed in business that I have never seen anyone buy. My first acquaintance with the name Donald Trump can be traced back to this source. Indeed Donald Trump is referenced in the book with his pledge in the presidential election campaign to improve the state of American airports -''lets make American airports great again''.

Then it is off to the departure gate where another ritual of waiting and queuing begins. The fumbling to get the passport and ticket, the nervous wait while we stand in line but the queue never moves. All this before we even get anywhere near the plane!

These and many more stages of the flight process are captured by Christopher Schaberg  relating to a single day's journey. This book not only covers all the experiences on such a day but also has a more philosophical theme regarding the nature of flight and what it means to travel. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend this to all travellers and non travellers alike.

This book was interesting (in a good way). It will give you a whole new appreciation for what goes on at the airport and the people who make that happen.

Airportness is the combination of dread and melancholia that grips my mind and belly on the day before a flight, the quiet tension that accompanies me all the way to the airport on the day of the trip, the relief of passing security, the humbling sense of wonder I feel when I realise just how many people, with their attendant stories, are travelling on the same day as me, the fear and thrill of flying, the disorienting and weirdly discomforting moment of arrival. It's also the horror stories I share with my friends about that time I was stuck indefinitely at San Francisco Airport, the mere action of peering up at the sky when an airplane passes overhead, and the environmental panic that clutches my lizard brain whenever I see something in the news about that third Heathrow runway. Airportness is, basically, any time you experience or even just think about airports and airplanes. And, of course, it's also the title of Christopher Schaberg's new book, a series of mini-essays looking at every little thing that contributes to airportness, from boarding passes to in-flight entertainment to airport-related LEGO sets.

Schaberg appears to be in a constant state of airportness. Give him anything--a film, a book, a music video--and he'll tell you what that thing says about airports and/or airplanes. The Force Awakens? Every time the Millennium Falcon struggles to lift off and scrapes its undercarriage on the ground, the film stimulates our horror/fascination for air travel disasters. Sofia Coppola's Somewhere? It only features flight once, sort of, when the characters are shown arriving LAX and then, immediately afterwards, leaving Milan Malpensa--and the very fact that the flight itself is not shown reflects how we barely even notice the experience anymore. David Bowie's Blackstar video? Bowie's ambivalence about space travel reflects the way many feel about flight in general: "we still desire the uplift of flight, while yet knowing its banality, and bracing for its ever-increasing indignities." 

Inhabiting Schaberg's mind was the highlight of the book for me. The man is positively obsessed. He even admits that a review of one of his previous airport-related books says that Schaberg might come across as "a touch insane". But to be so compelled by something that so many despise or find incredibly tedious--that's inspiring. And I, too, like to find connections between apparently unrelated things, even in this blog--be it amateur circus classes and Han Kang's harrowing novel about political violence in 1980s South Korea, Human Acts, or entomological horrors and Eleanor Wasserberg's gothic coming of age tale Foxlowe. Holden Caulfield once said, "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up the phone whenever you felt like it." I felt something similar with Airportness--I bet Schaberg would be an interesting person to hang out with. 

That said--my feelings for this book as a book are lukewarm. I often found myself wishing that it could be tweaked to become something different but related. Perhaps an anthropological study of airport work, or a nuts-and-bolts guide to everything that goes on in an airport, complete with diagrams. Something, in other words, that would show me new ways of thinking about airports. As it is, Schaberg did not delve deeply enough in almost any of the things he discusses to make me revise my own thoughts on the subject. Sure, we eat a lot of unhealthy snacks at airplanes, and it would be nicer if we could eat fresh fruit instead. Sure, there is something strangely comforting about airplane toilets. Sure, the act of takeoff is almost miraculous, and yet most people stop marvelling at it after the first few times. It's entirely possible he goes a bit deeper in his other two books, The Textual Life of Airports and The End of Airports, which I haven't read, and that he was aiming for something more breezy and fun with this one, something that is only a few steps removed from an observational comedy routine, and that can be easily consumed during a two-three hour flight without expending too much mental energy.

It should also be said that these are, perhaps inevitably, a cis white man's subjective thoughts and experiences, with inevitable blind spots. I say this as a blind-spotted cis white man myself. There is plenty of politics in Airportness--Schaberg often brings up the 45th president, and keeps coming back to the way airlines and airports deal with class in their advertising and in-flight services. But, for such a wide-ranging book, I found it a little surprising that a few lines weren't spared for racial-religious profiling at security checkpoints or passport control, barring a few blink-and-you'll-miss references here and there. And, as interesting as Schaberg's point may be that, with all the brouhaha over trans people's use of public toilets, absolutely anyone can use the toilets on an airplane, I find Schaberg's statement that gender generally doesn't matter on flights a tad suspect, coming from a cis man. 

There are, however, a few things that I will take from this book. One is the word airportness--it's a little cumbersome and fake-sounding, but using it as a label for the melancholic dread I always feel the day before a flight might rob it of some of its power. Then there's "gate lice", Schaberg's term for the people who cluster around the gate way before boarding, making you feel jittery and anxious, until, inevitably, you end up joining them. "Gate lice" is somewhat offensive, but it's also true that I often become one of them myself at some point or other, and this revelation might make me empathise more with them. Finally, I found Schaberg's musings on the term "bird strike" fairly interesting--it is funny that this is the term we use to describe a massive piece of machinery colliding against an animal who is actually meant to be in the sky.

Overall, then--after reading this book, the way I experience or think about airports and flying will largely stay the same. Which is a shame. However, I did enjoy spending time inside Schaberg's weird mind, and the book is a nice reminder that, no matter how soul-destroying something might be (and airports are pretty soul-destroying), there will always be someone who, instead, finds that something endlessly compelling.

I've read a lot of airport-related books, including Schaberg's previous books, The Textual Life of Airports and The End of Airports. This isn't a behind-the-scenes look at the airport and we don't go underground to investigate the baggage handling or upstairs to the control tower or on the apron to talk with the ramp agents. Schaberg is strictly a passenger for this book and invites us along to see the airport through the eyes of a philosopher/former airport employee. 

He makes a lot of thoughtful observations, in an almost stream of consciousness manner, investing rather a lot of meaning into an ad on an old boarding pass, for instance, and considering the phenomenon of small birds who've managed to get trapped in the departures terminal and taken up residence. He also shares his pet peeves, which I found less compelling. He is mystified by the popularity of "fishing shirts" among both travelers and airline employees. Once I figured out what a fishing shirt was, it seemed to me like a good garment for traveling in, wrinkle-resistant and quick drying. He is, at the time of writing the book, obsessed with and outraged by Donald Trump, often inserting a Trump-related comment almost randomly. It's a bit distracting.

I did enjoy his detours into airport-themed art and movies, which reminded me how much I liked his book about "reading" the airport (The Textual Life of Airports). In fact, I would recommend that someone considering reading Airportedness read The Textual Life of Airports first.

(Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for a digital review copy.)

I was hoping for much more from this book. I thought it was going to be a behind the scenes look at the airport, but it turned out to be a look at a typical traveler's experience, with an eye toward noticing the sublime. That might have been an interesting perspective for a portion of the book, but it is hard to stretch that for 176 pages. Plus, the author spent a lot of time carping about his experiences, his fellow passengers' lack of awareness, and Donald Trump. I'm not a Trump fan, but talking about that is only going to age the book and doesn't add substance to the dialogue. The idea of "airportness" reminded me of that scene from Mean Girls when one of them was trying to make "fetch" a catch phrase -- not working well here either. The book did make me think about some aspects of the air journey, like the departures entrance and our fellow avian travelers, but there was too much else to wade through in getting to those points. Nevertheless, it is these moments that earned the book a second star from me.

I thought "Airportness" would be an interesting read, since I travel a lot and it appeared from the synopsis that it might have some interesting stories in it.  However, it appears to just be the author's attempt to justify his study of air travel as his academic area of research.  As a scientist who has done serious medical research, this seems to me a rather weak area of focus.  [I'm guessing it allows him to deduct his travel for pleasure as part of his research.  Nice gig if you can get it. ]  The book, however, was not interesting.  It simply takes the reader through the various steps of air travel, with an attempt to make serious conclusions.  I found it boring and tried to scan instead.  Even that didn't hold my interest, so I gave up halfway through.  I was hoping to read some funny or unusual anecdotes, but didn't find any.  I would not recommend this book.

I really liked this different way of approaching an airport and looking at them and flight. I like travelling but airports make me nervous I will take my next trip with this book in mind so hopefully the trip will be less stressful

When I first came across this book, I was intrigued. Very interesting concept, and I feel like the author had a lot to share. This was an enjoyable read and made me reflect during some parts. I would recommend this book.

While I really enjoyed all the information, there was ALOT of information! Well worth the time to read.