Review: Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole

Title: Cruising Attitude
Author: Heather Poole
Format: Paperback
Publisher: William Morrow
Publish Date: October 18, 2011
Source: Library

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You like memoirs.
• You want a laugh.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Flying the not-so-friendly skies...

In her more than fifteen years as an airline flight attendant, Heather Poole has seen it all. She's witnessed all manner of bad behavior at 35,000 feet and knows what it takes for a traveler to become the most hated passenger onboard. She's slept in flight attendant crashpads in "Crew Gardens," Queens--sharing small bedrooms crammed with bunk beds with a parade of attractive women who come and go at all hours, prompting suspicious neighbors to jump to the very worst conclusions. She's watched passengers and coworkers alike escorted off the planes by police. She can tell you why it's a bad idea to fall for a pilot but can be a very good one (in her case) to date a business-class passenger. Heather knows everything about flying in a post-9/11 world--and she knows what goes on behind the scenes, things the passengers would never dream."

My Two Cents: 

I'm not a huge fan of flying (it's more all the rigamarole that you have to go through before you get on the plane) but being a flight attendant has always sort of seemed like it would be a cool job to me. You get to travel to exotic places and see awesome things. It seemed sort of glamorous to me! Heather Poole shows us that while being a flight attendant is exciting, there's also a lot of crazy things that you have to go through or witness in order to do the really cool things.

I loved getting some of the sort of behind the scenes gossip about things like crash pads, what sort of training you have to go through to even be a flight attendant (it's pretty intense), insane passengers, and insane flight attendants (eek - they exist; definitely not something I want to think about next time on the plane; definitely not something I want to think about). This memoir has a couple really funny parts in it that had me laughing out loud.

What I probably liked most about this book was the way that it was written. Poole writes in a way that's very conversational. You feel more like you're talking to a friend instead just reading a book. I love memoirs like this.

Bottom line: This is an entertaining read with a lot of interesting tidbits!