EASY GOING

For a fast-moving, light-traveling filmmaker (ready to go in ten minutes, he says), London has stuffed a lot of unnecessary words into this book of travel tips. But for one category of traveler, it does have quite a bit to say: people who, like London, do a great deal of long-distance flying. He's persuasive on the advantages of a daytime flight to Europe, of a stopover (or two) en route to Sydney, of selecting an aisle seat--the better to get up and move around. He's up on all the things you have a right to claim from the airlines (domestically, a seat in a nonsmoking section; generally, some fill-in money when luggage doesn't arrive), but which they won't tell you about, unasked. Airline food--its perils and how to avoid them--occupies a whole chapter. Maintenance of health, all round, is the other emphasis: why to be wary of water (and ice); which foods to shun; how to deal with traveler's diarrhea (a.k.a. Montezuma's Disease). Other sections--on traveling alone, on pinning down reservations, on getting the laundry done--offer a mix of the commonplace and the voice-of-experience. There are anecdotes and digressions too. Not a word about sightseeing, though: this is very much a guide to jetting about with a minimum of jet lag (one chapter) or other discomforts of total mobility.