Best Books for Killing Time

Long Reads for Longer Fun

Maybe your flight got delayed on the tarmac and you have to sit for two hours before takeoff. Or maybe you just need to polish off that last half hour before your spouse comes home from work. Either way, sometimes you need a book or two that will take up longer than average to finish reading. If so, check out some of the following selections.

Look and Find Books: In look and find books, it can take ages to find everything on one page spread. Plus you can get them in almost any theme. Whether each page has a certain number of items or only one well hidden image, these books can eat up a lot of time in waiting rooms and other places.

Where’s Waldo? Books: A specific type of look and find book originally geared towards adults, kids of almost any age enjoy the challenge of spotting Waldo in all his travels. You can also complete the checklist for each page listed at the back of the book to use up even more time as needed.

Look Inside Flap Books: These flap books for older kids can take forever to read if you explore each flap. They also come from Usborne in a variety of themes to appeal to different kids’ interests. You can spend less time reading them if needed, but once you start reading everything, it’s hard to go back to the shortened version.

Compilation Books: These big books contain lots of shorter stories. I like that you can choose to read as many stories as you have time for, so they work for when time’s tight at bedtime or to shave off lots of extra minutes. Their heavier weights don’t lend themselves to packing easily, but they work well at home. Some even come with CDs so you don’t have to do the reading. Best of all, the ones from Usborne include two different texts, one at the top of the page, and one at the bottom. You can read just the text at the top to finish quicker for shorter attention spans or tighter timeframes. Or you can read all the words and the story makes sense both ways.