"Don't you find that your emotions are heightened in the air?" I was at a dinner party and the conversation went back and forth with one guy saying that although he never cried in movies on terra firma, in the air he sobbed uncontrollably. A woman interjected that she found reading on a plane so engrossing that she always remembered everything that she'd read. I was intrigued - although I wasn't sure I agreed. I cry easily at movies on the ground but I'm not sure that I've cried watching a film in the air. And as for retaining what I read - do I ever? As one friend put it: "No need to retain what I read. I am not studying for an exam".

I decided to do an unscientific survey to see whether this would be borne out by other people and the following is the result of a straw poll of around 50 people who kindly answered my questions. I asked whether or not they felt that their emotions were heightened in the air, if they found it easy to read, what they read, whether they retained it (the answer a resounding no) and whether there was a particularly memorable book they'd read while flying.

The range of books and magazines read and enjoyed was huge - Vanity Fair was the most favoured magazine - bought as a treat for the flight by many and kept for take-off and landing. Biographies were popular; Mary S. Lovell's The Mitford Girls and Martin Gilbert's Churchill: A Life, being two memorable books. Other people answered that they vividly recalled Cry the Beloved Country, Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Jewel in the Crown, Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor, The Day of the Jackal, Tim Moore's Continental Drift and The Clockwork Orange years after they were read.

Somebody left a book about Solzhenitsyn on a plane at Kiev and was so annoyed that amazingly he managed to talk his way back onto the plane to collect it - and that in the days when Solzhenitsyn was banned. One woman after years of being too terrified to fly had just managed to get back on a plane again only to immerse herself in Ian McEwan's Saturday which opens with a plane crash - was fate telling her something? She panicked. One friend says that he agrees with Annie Proulx that what you see out of the window is of far more interest than anything in a book; he also feels he has to look out of the window to keep the plane up, whereas another feels that if she looks out of the window she'll see that the wing is on fire; she reads Trollope.

There is certainly snobbery about reading in the air - some said it's the obvious time to get immersed in Dan Brown whereas others said that they couldn't understand why they should want to read The Da Vinci Code in the air if they didn't on the ground. Friendships can be forged by what one's neighbour is reading - a friend was sitting next to someone reading a comedy crime novel by Janet Evanovich whom she'd just interviewed - they became firm long-term friends. Of course people like me are always going to look and see what others are reading so someone else, also aware of this, said that she would avoid books like How to spice up your sex life. P.G. Wodehouse enabled one man to laugh out loud as his plane was being shot at in Zimbabwe in the 1970s.

Remarkably few people read about their destination (myself included): George Eliot's Romola accompanied someone to Florence three times without being opened. Only one person said that she was an avid reader of airline magazines - many do not watch movies but one woman watched The Royal Tannenbaums four times on a flight back from Australia and she says that as a result of this, had no jet lag!

Thrillers, mystery novels and Alexander McCall Smith play a large part. Someone wrote that she is so addled with tranquillizers by the time she boards that she can't take in anything that requires a brain - her concentration improving as the flight goes on and the drugs wear off. The general consensus among those polled was that if the emotions are heightened its probably to do with alcohol or exhaustion rather than the pressurized cabin. Someone wrote that she wished she could read every book on an aeroplane as she seems to have a more charitable view of books up in the air - not that she feels her critical judgement is suspended, as she has tossed many crap books away. One of the polled said that his only heightened emotion was one of irritation, although another said that he felt that a plane flight is a bardo - a door between the life you had and the new life when you touch down. But this from someone who has written a book of meditations, sadly not published, specifically for someone on an air flight.

A few said that they found it difficult to concentrate because of the ambient noise (this has never bothered me) and the constant movement (well yes, planes do move). Many said that the only time they get time to read uninterruptedly is on a plane and that planes are the very best places for reading - no mobiles, no appointments or obligations to interfere. One woman went so far as to say that if it weren't for deep vein thrombosis she would cheerfully board train or plane for a few days every six weeks just to think and read. She had thought of asking for a grant just to travel in interstital space for the luxury of reading, researching and thinking since everything in print felt clear and memory wasn't a problem.

So life in the air produces widely divergent views and varied reading matter, in that respect no different from life on the ground, except that in the air people often break from their normal habits and seem to read what they really want.

Times recommends

• The world's 10 weirdest things to eat
• Correspondents: hoteliers revenge for Tripadvisor
• A slow, ponderous journey up the Mekong