Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.

Levithan’s line is a wry, self-deprecating celebration of the reader’s habit: carrying a book as a form of preparedness for life’s small delays. By invoking the absurdly specific scenario of “wait[ing] on line for Santa,” he frames reading as both practical (a way to redeem wasted time) and imaginative (a companion that makes even childish or surreal inconveniences tolerable). The humor also signals a broader ethos common in bookish writing: literature as portable refuge, a tool for patience, and a quiet assertion of autonomy—when circumstances impose waiting, the reader chooses how that time will feel.