Day 79 - Cruising Attitude - Heather Poole

07 May 2017 100daysofwriting · books · poole

(May 9th, 2317 GMT+5.5)

I read Cruising Attitude today. I did that the whole day, I read about 53% of it. It is a book by Heather Poole about her foray into the Airline industry and talks about a lot of the intricacies of the flight attendant job, the training, the appearance that is almost always impeccable, the language, their body language, their walk through the terminal (!!).

The book featured in a recent NY Times article about what flight attendants learn about at de-escalation training, and at 260 pages, it seemed like a really good idea to start reading that book and finish it off as soon as I can. (I am running 3 books behind schedule on my Goodreads Reading challenge. I don’t see any holes in the next few months to be able to patch that up. PUSH NOW!)

The first half of it was really funny. It was also not coherent. It felt like amateurish writing with phrases repeated within the space of a 2 pages, which is more of an editing glitch, I think. But the fact that the writer is an amateur is not lost on me.

She has tried to tell a great story, which is commendable considering that it might have been just as easy for her to just write a few chapters and make each chapter about one particular incident and gloss over her own personal experience as the first chapter.

The concentration on her friends and fellow flight attendants till now has been indicative of the amount of sisterhood and comaradery that she feels about them. Including those she was at flight attendant training (which she prefers to call Barbie Bootcamp) with.

I hope to be able to finish off this book in the near future and move on to more ambitious reading projects. (This is certainly a day-off book with such easy reading and a bare bones, easy to follow plot) I started this book with the hope to really understand what flight attendants think and feel when they are on a flight and in charge of about 50 passengers each. That goal will be fulfilled by the end of this book, HEATHER POOLE, KUDOS!

POST #79 is OVER