books

For National Book Lovers Day: our new book

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Amelia Earhart Reading,” International Women’s Air & Space Museum,

August 9 was National Book Lovers Day and we celebrated by visiting some of the places in Seattle that are featured in our new book, 111 Places in Seattle That You Must Not Miss, which begins shipping today.

The book is part of the international 111 Places series, which offers locals and experienced travelers guides to hidden treasures, overlooked gems, and charming curious places in great cities.

For the Seattle guide, I’m pointing readers to many airport and aviation-related items around town, including the art collections at both Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) and King County International Airport – Boeing Field (BFI).

Richard Elliot’s ‘Eyes on the World’ at SEA
Brad Miller’s “30,000 Feet” Photo by Joe Freemans Courtesy 4Culture

The Museum of Flight is represented in the book, with the story of the Taylor Aerocar, an early flying car that worked.

Taylor Aerocar III, one wing folded back for ground travel, one wing attached for flight.

And we also point people to the tiny pocket park on the shores of Lake Union where they’ll find a plaque marking the spot where the first Boeing plane took off.

The plaque reads “From this site, Boeing launched it first airplane, the B&W, in 1916.”

Of course, there are plenty of other non-aviation sites in the book, including the Giant Shoe Museum, the world’s greenest commercial building, a haunted staircase, the Rubber Chicken Museum, a shop where you can buy personalized magic wands, the place where you can rent a rowboat for free, and lots more.

We hope you’ll get a copy of 111 Places in Seattle That You Must Not Miss from your favorite bookseller.

More libraries at airports for Nat’l Library Week

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This week we’re marking National Library Week by highlighting libraries of all sorts at airports.

We started earlier this week with an airport library list put together by the Stuck at the Airport librarian that includes libraries, book exchanges, and short story dispensers at more than 10 airports stretching from Amsterdam to Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Here are some more libraries to look for at airports around the country. Let us know if we missed yours.

Here’s the FLYBRARY (get it?) at Redmond Municipal Airport (RDM) in Oregon.

And here are some little libraries from Houston’s William B. Hobby (HOU) and George Bush International Airport (IAH).

And Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) is very proud of its library too.

It came in the mail: Beautiful books and a snazzy suitcase

luggage,

Test-driving a colorful carry-on

A week before COVID-19 made staying home the right thing for us to do, we had the chance to test drive the Roam luggage carry-on we were invited to design for ourselves.

We’ve been reading about these bags. And besides offering a line of 4 carry-ons and check-ins that are super light and durable, Roam lets each customer customize the color of their suitcase, from the front and back shells to the zipper, the wheels and the handle.

Here’s how our Jaunt XL turned out.

Pretty, right?

If we were to do it again, we’d go a bit wilder with the colors, but this design still stands out in a crowd.

We’re grounded, for now, so the bag has only been road-tested once.

But our Roam bag made it home nick-free after traveling as checked luggage to and from London, through a half dozen London Underground stations and a neighborhood with bumpy sidewalks.

Books we may have time to read

We love the fact that books show up in the Stuck at the Airport mailroom. But we don’t always have time to sit down and read them.

The upside of sheltering in place is that now we do.

Here are two recent arrivals we’ll spend time with this week.

Many national parks may be closed to visitors right now in the interest of social distancing, but Scenic Science of the National Parks – An Explorer’s Guide to Wildlife, Geology and Botany, by Emily Hoff and Maygen Keller, is a good armchair prep tool for when heading to a park makes sense.

The book is filled with scientific tidbits, insider tips, recommended hikes and notes on all sorts of wonders to explore in 60 national parks around the country.

Tokyo Travel Sketchbook – Kawaii Culture, Wabi Sabi Design, Female Samurais and Other Obsessions, is chock full of the charming images Spanish artist Amaia Arrazola created while spending a month in Tokyo.

If travel restrictions have put your trip to Japan on hold right now, try touring Tokyo virtually through Arrazola’s keen and quirky observations.

Souvenir Sunday: Aerial Geology book

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Anyone who’s looked out an airplane window will surely have wondered about – and wondered at – the landscape below.  Mary Caperton Morton has clearly done that and put together a book that goes a long way to explaining how those great views got that way.

Aerial Geology:  A High-Altitude Tour of North America’s Spectaular Volcanos, Canyons, Glaciers, Lakes, Craters and Peaks (coming soon from Timber Press) is filled with incredible images, descriptive illustrations and fact-filled, geology-based explanations of how each site was formed and what makes each landform noteworthy.

I love all the photos in this large-format book, but one of my favorite features is the little box by each landform titled “Flight Pattern” that lets you know where you’d be flying when you’re most likely to spot the image featured.

Here are couple of images from the book:

Cape Cod – Massachusetts, credit NASA

 

Shiprock – in northwest New Mexico – credit Malcolm C. Andrews/AerialHorizon Photography