Mystery Unfolds Midair as Traveler Becomes Obsessed with Stranger’s ‘War And Peace’

Ever stare at the back of someone’s airplane seat, wondering if you’ll survive two hours floating above Nebraska without going completely bonkers? Well, Kenneth Vargas sure found himself in that pickle—and his solution wasn’t scrolling TikTok or counting the clouds outside. Nope. Instead, he became a stealth literary agent, devouring Tolstoy’s War and Peace one borrowed page at a time, and boy, do I admire his sheer gumption—I mean, what’s etiquette on peeking over a stranger’s shoulder while inching through 19th-century Russia at 30,000 feet? Have you ever gotten so wrapped up in someone else’s reading that you forgot you hadn’t even brought a book? Grab your in-flight peanuts, folks. This one’s a masterpiece of opportunistic reading—and maybe a cautionary tale for all the tech-overconfident travelers out there. LEARN MORE

CHICAGO—After forgetting to bring sufficient entertainment for the two-hour flight from Atlanta to O’Hare Airport, area man Kenneth Vargas reportedly spent his entire time aboard a plane Thursday reading War And Peace over the shoulder of the passenger seated in the row ahead of him. “I felt like an idiot for not downloading any books on my Kindle, but when I noticed the guy in front of me was reading something, I figured I could just look off of his,” Vargas said of the man’s print copy of Leo Tolstoy’s roughly 1,300-page seminal Russian epic. “While I really didn’t know who all the characters were, I think I mostly got the gist of it. At first I was just casually reading to amuse myself, but now I’m honestly kind of invested. During drink service I missed a couple pages, so I’m not exactly sure what happened with Natasha Rostova. I think I can pretty much fill in the blanks, though.” As he exited the aircraft, Vargas confirmed he was disappointed the flight had ended before he had time to finish the novel.