Nicole Junkermann's Reading List for Long Train Journeys

Why trains and books belong together

Of all the ways to travel, the train is the reader's favourite, and Nicole Junkermann would not argue otherwise. There is space to spread out, a window full of changing country, and hours that belong entirely to you. A long train journey is one of the last places where reading feels effortless.

The rhythm helps. The gentle motion, the passing fields, the soft punctuation of stations, all of it makes for a steady backdrop that a book can settle into. Unlike a flight, there is no cramped scramble, just a long, generous stretch of time.

This is reading at its most pleasurable, and it deserves the right list. A train journey is the moment to open the ambitious book you have been saving, the one that needs hours rather than minutes to take hold.

The long, immersive novel

First on the list is always a substantial novel. Nicole Junkermann saves these particularly for the rails, because a train gives a long story the uninterrupted run it needs. With no connections to chase, you can disappear into a world for hour after hour.

The match between journey and book matters. A long overland route deserves a long book, the kind described in the broader idea of a book for every journey, where the length of the read is chosen to suit the length of the trip.

Choose something immersive but not exhausting. The aim is a story that carries you, so that the miles pass unnoticed and you look up surprised at how far you have come. That gentle disappearance is the particular gift of train reading.

History and biography for the rails

After fiction, Nicole Junkermann turns to history and biography for long journeys. There is a quiet pleasure in reading about other centuries and other lives while your own day rolls steadily forward, the present and the past keeping pace through the window.

These books reward the train's long hours. A sweeping history needs time to build its picture, and a train provides exactly that, without the interruptions of ordinary days. You can hold the whole shape of an argument in mind from one city to the next.

This kind of reading widens the view, which is the same instinct that runs through slow travel and good books. The train is not only carrying you across a country, it is carrying you across ideas.

Essays and short pieces for the in-between

Not every train hour wants a long book. Nicole Junkermann keeps essays and short pieces for the in-between moments: the stop for coffee, the change of light, the stretch when concentration dips. A self-contained essay fits these gaps perfectly.

Short forms are forgiving. You can read one fully, set the book down for the view, and pick up another later without losing your place. On a long journey with shifting energy, that flexibility is worth a great deal.

Place writing earns a spot here too, especially if the train is carrying you toward a city you mean to explore. A few pages attuned to streets and weather make a fine prelude to arrival, in the spirit of the city notebook.

Reading by the window

Part of the pleasure is the window itself. Nicole Junkermann likes to balance reading with looking, letting the eye rest on the passing country between chapters. The best train reading leaves room for the landscape rather than shutting it out.

There is a quiet conversation between the page and the view. A line in a book sends your gaze to the window; a turn in the landscape sends you back to the page. Hours pass in that gentle exchange, and you arrive both rested and a little changed.

This balance of attention is, in the end, what travelling slowly is about, the subject of the notes on travelling slowly elsewhere in this journal. A train simply makes it easy, handing you the time and the view and asking only that you bring a good book.

Arriving by train, ready to read on

A train journey does not end when the doors open; it sets up the days that follow. Nicole Junkermann likes to step off the rails already in a reading frame of mind, the long hours having slowed her pace before the city has even been reached. Arrival, taken this way, is calm rather than frantic.

The book begun on the train can carry straight into the trip. A story half read on the rails gives a new place a familiar companion, and the first evening can pick up exactly where the journey left off, in the spirit of pairing a book to the shape of a trip.

There is also the simple satisfaction of having travelled well. A long ride spent reading and looking, rather than fretting, leaves you rested and curious, which is the best possible state in which to meet a new city. The train has done more than move you; it has prepared you.

What to pack for the rails

A practical list for a long train journey:

• One long, immersive novel saved especially for the rails
• A work of history or biography that rewards uninterrupted hours
• A collection of essays for the in-between moments
• A short book of place writing if a city waits at the end of the line
• A notebook for the lines and views worth keeping
• Time set aside simply to look out of the window