Holiday Reads · 3 min read · October 1, 2025

Read the air miles away – books to match your flight length

Make the most of your time in the air with a book that starts at take-off and wraps up by landing – short stories, epic reads, and everything in between.

Short on time? Let us summarise this guide for you.

This article suggests picking a book to match the length of your flight so that you can finish it by the time you land. Short stories or novellas for 1 to 2 hour flights, short novels for 3 to 5 hours, more substantial fiction or memoirs for 6 to 12 hours, and truly epic reads for journeys over 13 hours. It gives specific book recommendations (e.g. Foster, Animal Farm, Dracula, Hilary Mantel's The Mirror & the Light, A Game of Thrones) keyed to different flight durations. It also suggests using e-readers or audiobooks so you can carry more without the bulk and know roughly how long something will take when flying.

Flying can be a drag – especially if you're sandwiched in the middle seat with dodgy wifi and nothing to do. But pick the right book and your flight can fly by. Even better? Choose one that matches the length of your journey, and you'll step off the plane with the satisfying feeling of having finished a whole book before your holiday's even begun.

It's a simple way to upgrade your travel experience. A book that takes two hours to read is ideal for a short hop to Europe. Heading to New York or Dubai? Sink into something meatier. And if you're off on a long-haul adventure to Australia or Japan, now's your chance to finally tackle that epic novel you've been putting off.

There's no need to worry about cliffhangers or getting halfway through and forgetting what happened – especially if you won't have time to read when you land. Plus, there's something extra satisfying about reading a book that matches your destination – whether that's a Tokyo-set tale on your way to Japan, or a Dublin novella en route to Ireland.

So here it is. A list of books tailored to your flight time, with just the right number of pages (or hours) to carry you from take-off to landing – no bookmarks required.

1 to 2 hour flights

You probably won't have time to properly sink into a novel on a short-haul flight, so why not give short stories a go? Each story on The Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg takes half an hour to 45 minutes, so you could fit in 2 or 3 on a short flight. Many of them centre around travel and self-discovery, which feels pretty apt for a holiday read – although hopefully your trip goes a little better than theirs.

A short-haul flight to Europe provides the perfect opportunity to relive your school days. Many of the books taught in schools can be read in less than 2 hours – so if Animal Farm or Of Mice and Men weren't on your curriculum, now's the time to see what the fuss is about.

If flashbacks to English lessons and homework aren't screaming 'holiday', there are plenty of other quick reads to choose from. The 88 pages of Claire Keegan's Foster can be flicked through in an hour or two – perfect if you're flying to Ireland, where this heart-wrenching tale of belonging is set.

3 to 5 hour flights

We're in package holiday territory now. You've got a bit more time to play with on your flight to the Canaries, Turkey or Greece, which gives you the ideal opportunity to sink into a short novel.

You might want to fit in a little kip while you're up in the air. If so, consider Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata – you'll likely read it in around 2 and a half hours, giving you a bit of time before or after to get your head down ready for your holiday. Oh, and it's rather good – this award-winning commentary on societal pressures is wonderfully weird, deadpan and profound in equal measure.

Or skip the sleep and fill your flight with Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays, an instant classic that helped define modern American fiction. It doesn't exactly paint Hollywood in a positive light, which will make you very glad you chose Tenerife over Venice Beach. For something more recent, try This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – this time-bending sci-fi love story will take you to another world far away from the middle seat you're stuck in.

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In Holiday Reads Jul 29, 2025

6 to 8 hour flights

A full day's work of reading will take you from London all the way to New York or Dubai. Been sleeping on Agatha Christie? Murder on the Orient Express can be comfortably read in a 9 to 5 shift, making it ideal for both an 8-hour flight and a day working from home. Just don't tell your boss.

For a memoir that'll stay with you long after you've read it, try Viv Albertine's brilliantly named Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. Or Clothes, Music, Boys for short. This 7-hour read follows the guitarist of 70s punk rockers The Slits, an all-female band in a male-dominated scene, plus a candid account of her life post-punk. It's a great book to read on your way to New York, as Viv recalls her time touring there with The Clash.

The Slits formed at a Patti Smith gig, whose touching coming-of-age memoir Just Kids offers a much larger bite of the Big Apple. And at 5 and a half hours long, it gives you a bit of nap time too. It follows Patti's relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe as they navigate the grit and glamour of NYC in the 70s.

9 to 12 hour flights

You're not thinking of reading a book for 12 hours straight, are you? Well if that's how you plan on making your journey to LA, Japan or South Africa literally fly by, then good luck to you – we're here to help.

You'll need to choose something deeply immersive to read through a book this chunky from start to finish. How about Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? Her third novel follows a young Nigerian woman who emigrates to the United States to attend university. The rave reviews aren't for nothing – it's not only a great story, it might just change the way you look at the world.

There's no shortage of classics to finally get around to either. Dracula (11 hours), Jane Eyre (9 hours) and Pride and Prejudice (just under 9 hours) all fit the bill. Or for something a little more modern, read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (9 hours). This magical, sprawling fiction has drawn comparisons to Harry Potter and is a film adaptation waiting to happen.

13+ hour flights

When Hilary Mantel's final Cromwell novel, The Mirror & the Light, came out, the sheer size of the book was striking. It looked like a read that would take years to finish, but supposedly it can be done in 14 and a half hours. Sounds like the perfect book for your long layover flight to Australia.

The only issue is you'll have to read the first two beforehand, Wolf Hall (9 hours) and Bring Up the Bodies (7 hours). Two on the way there and one on the way back? You don't mind carrying the equivalent of a house's worth of bricks in your hand luggage, right? In all seriousness, they're supposed to be very good.

Other famously long books include A Game of Thrones (21 hours), which is a great read as long as you don't mind waiting several many years for the final books to come out. Then there's The Lord of the Rings trilogy (20 hours combined), a foundational fantasy series that has an actual ending. Or try Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (13 hours), a semi-autobiographical novel about a fugitive who escapes to India and dives into the underworld of Bombay in the 80s.

Tips for in-flight reading

Instead of squeezing three chunky Hilary Mantel books into your hand luggage, load them onto an e-reader. They're super lightweight and hold hundreds of books, so you won't have to worry about lugging chunky novels around on your travels.

Or leave the e-reader at home too. Download an audiobook or two to your phone, plug your headphones in and listen to your novel come to life. They're perfect during turbulence and when the lights are out on the plane. Listening to an audiobook tends to take longer than reading, so our timings might be a little out if that's your plan. But at least you'll know exactly how long it'll take to finish the audiobook, making it much easier to plan what to listen to on your flight.

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