Customer Reviews

Week at the Airport

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is my first experience of Alain de Botton's writing and after devouring this book in less than 2 hours (partly due to it's brevity and partly because I enjoyed it so much) I'll be looking to read more of his work.

I'm probably a little unusual in that I love airports and attempt to arrive much earlier than is really necessary so I can get airside as soon as possible and begin to immerse myself in the world of the terminal. I've never been to terminal 5 but the world that de Botton describes could be any large airport terminal; it feels very familiar.

I loved de Botton's perceptive writing and his incisive and insightful look at the lifeblood of the airport. The book is funny, interesting and very engaging. He meets a variety of people and captures their essence in a few short words; impressive observational writing. The photographs by Richard Baker make the book and it wouldn't be as good or feel as complete without them.

This little book is thoroughly enjoyable for the high quality writing and high quality photography. It's one of my favourite books read this year and I'll be getting The Art of Travel soon!

I have long lamented that Mr. De Botton's publishers can't seem motivated enough to provide color illustrations. I would gladly repurchase a new edition of The Architecture of Happiness, among others, if the illustrations could be redone to the quality of those in A Week at the Airport. Now, having established myself as a reader who likes pretty pictures, I will go on record to say that if Mr. De Botton were responsible for a picture-free user's manual of some piece of software in painfully tiny print, I would still purchase it and read it cover to cover.

This man has something worthwhile to say and a piercing intellect with which to say it. The executive who chose him to profile the airport should be promoted. Fine writing is like a journey and as Mr. De Botton has taught us, travel is an art. Obviously the author leaves traces of his biases and interests in any work and reading this work only serves to increase my envy of those travelers who, having encountered the man at the table, were able to engage him in a two-sided conversation.

However, a one-sided conversation with this author quite suffices. Lest your powers of perception be dim, this is a book about an airport--nothing more, nothing less. We need, sometimes, to be reminded of the successes of our culture and the example of a Ghanian family leaving London with a prized new possession sums it up nicely. The airport may contain a posh and comfortable retreat for the wealthy, but as a whole represents the strivings of an entire civilization to explore and do business to the limits of the globe itself.

An airport is an enterprise worth describing and this book does credit to the concept of turning a trained observer loose on what may otherwise escape our attention.

Highest Recommendation

If you've ever imagined where the airport departures timetable might take you, Alain de Botton shares your travel lust. The author was fortunate to receive an assignment to set up a desk at the new Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport for a week, and write about his observations. It is our good fortune to observe his week, and enjoy the unprecedented access he shares with us in "A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary."

His assignment as Writer in Residence gave him full privileges to wander the airport, night and day, and he doesn't miss a thing from security, loneliness, behind-the-scenes workers, and mechanical marvels. de Botton writes with a conversational tone as though he is thinking aloud, as in his other books, and he invites us in to look into the lives of travelers.

I look forward to seeing the airport through de Botton's eyes the next time I pack a bag and travel. And, with great anticipation, I will also await Alain de Botton's next book, wherever the world takes him.

Helen Gallagher Release Your Writing: Book Publishing, Your Way

I've expected a sophisticated and colourful description of a life at the airport with some new interesting information since I knew author have been given an unrestricted pass to all airport areas. However this book is 5% about life at the airport and 95% poetic and boring tirades about life in general. As someone with eyes and ears I know very well the diversity of human emotions being expressed at airports however not having a chance to see more from any airport than a regular traveler I wanted to read more about interesting aspects of an airport life hidden from travelers eyes. This book doesn't provide this at all.

This is certainly an idiosyncratic book and not for everyone, but even just a few of the paragraphs are enough to justify it as a great read for me. You can learn more about humans, customer service, air travel...from a philosopher like de Bouton than from a dozen average business books--and the book's just the perfect size to put in your carry-on for while you're below 10,000 feet and can't use your iKindleDroidNookReader®.

I've quoted several passages of this for my upcoming book and whenever I return to those passages I'm always newly impressed by the fluidity and insight in de Bouton's writing.

PS "How Proust Can Change Your Life" is another wonderful book from him, and probably more generally interesting if you don't travel a lot.

Micah Solomon, co-author, Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization

The behavioral economist Dan Ariely posted a story on his blog about a locksmith whose tips dropped once he mastered his craft and could perform his tasks in less time than he could as a novice. His customers equated the speed with which he accomplished his work with a lack of effort or complexity. So it is with some readers who dismiss de Botton's brilliant and economical style with as lacking depth or substance.

With sly humor and a keen sense of observation, de Botton offers up well-written essays whose setting is Heathrow Airport but whose subjects range from classical literature to modern relationships to our quest to satisfy psychological needs through consumerism.

As he has done earlier de Botton pairs his work with well-chosen photographs to enhance the mood and setting. Although this book is short, it's evident that a great deal of effort went into writing it. A certain amount of effort or at least calm attention is required to appreciate its depth, and the reader who offers up the attention this book deserves will not be disappointed.

I have admired Alain de Botton's work in the past, especially How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Art of Travel, but this book is a real disappointment. It fails on almost every level. I kept getting the feeling that de Botton was really thrashing around searching for something to say, something to fill up the pages so that he could actually call it a book. The way he approached the subject--Heathrow Airport--isn't worthy of much more than a magazine article. It's just plain too thin. De Botton's elegant sentences do show up here, but I began to feel he was just repeating points he's made elsewhere. And there's a kind of cuteness in his reflections that was fresh once but now just feels a bit grating. I had a hard time finishing the book because I was just plain bored. All in all this struck me as a lackadaisical effort.

I am an avid reader of Alain's work. This is one of my favorites. It's brief yet so knowledgeable about how people interact and react to airports. Read it, it's fast and a great book to add to your library.

Classic de Botton. Insightful, engaging, written with an eye for detail and a depth few other writers can match.

My wife gave me this book for Christmas. She thought that, my being a retired director of an international airport, I'd enjoy reading a layperson's studied explanations of what goes on behind the scenes at a major airport. I read the first twenty pages, but the author's "style" was so verbose and effusive that I refused to go any further. I felt like de Botton was so busy trying to paint a visual masterpiece that he failed to tell the story. If you eliminate the colorful, overstuffed phraseology from the book you'd end up with half the number of pages. The aircraft entering a maintenance hangar had "ailments", the faulty microwave oven is described as "opinionated", and the engine exhaust deposits on the rear are caused by "the enraged thrust of its four RB211 engines...." The author wonders, "...if scientists and engineers might have designed planes and their means of take-off differently had our species been graced with some subtler, less thunderous mode of conception, perhaps one managed frictionlessly and quietly by the male's sitting for a few hours on an egg left behind in a leafy recess by the female." What does this have to do with an airport? Unfortunately, the book is full of this drivel. Other than that, the photos were nice.