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Public Transport Reading Project 07

It's SIMPLE !  It's FUN !  Ask yourself !  Ask others ! 

What BOOK are you reading on the bus or train or subway ?
What COLOR is the cover of the book you are reading on the train or subway or bus ?
What BOOKS have you seen PEOPLE reading on the subway or bus or train ?
Which city or town are you reporting from ?

Please let us know — e-mail to wessells [at] aol [dot] com or by postcard to :
Temporary Culture, P.O.B. 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 USA

Buchnarr, 1494. Ware! Ware! Ware the Book-Fool!

     
  5 July 07
The Public Transport Reading Project is on summer vacation. You may continue to send field reports to wessells [at] aol [dot] com. Watch for phase two in September. See you then.

 
     
  3 July 07
NJT : man in white shirt with stiff posture,orange red paperback, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TIme  by Mark Haddon ; two women, Investment in Death  by J. D. Robb, library hardcover , and a hardcover with red spine and black boards.
Ferry : one woman, paperback.
3 train (uptown) : four women, three paperbacks, one red hardcover  two men, one green paperback, one hardcover.
NJT : woman, black hardcover, The Space between Us  by Thrity Umrigar.

 
     
  27 June 07
PATH ; two women, one hardcover, A Thousand Splendid Suns  by Khaled Hosseini, one paperback, Vanity Fair  by Thackeray (re-sighting) ; one man, paperback.

 
     
  26 June 07
W train (downtown) ; one woman, paperback, Middlesex  by Jeffrey Eugenides.

 
     
  25 June 07
NJT : one man, El Leopardo al Sol  by Laura Restrepo (paperback) ; two women, paperbacks, one The DevilÍs Heiress  by Jo Beverly (paperback).
W train (uptown) : two women, two men, all paperbacks.
W train (downtown) ; two men, one library hardcover, one paperback  three women, all paperbacks, one Kitchen Confidential.

 
     
  Boston : 20 June 07
When I go to Boston for my yoga class, I always look for readers on the " T " to report to you — Mostly people read magazines and newspapers, or books with little tiny print in the titles that can't be seen . . . BUT this past week I saw someone reading Orhan Pamuk's SNOW  — 4 big letters ! [DN]

 
     
  mid-June 07, undated note on the cover of the TLS for 8 June
PATH : five women, 2 paperbacks, three hardcovers (one Vanity Fair  by Thackeray ; one man, paperback Sacred Contract .

 
     
  London : 9 June 07
Northern line, Charing Cross branch, a.m. : five women, two men, all paperbacks.
Northern line, Charing Cross branch, p.m. : two women, two men, all paperbacks.

 
     
  London : 8 June 07
Northern line, Charing Cross branch, morning rush hour : two men, one paperback, one hardcover in red and black dust jacket ; three women, all paperbacks, titles : Liberation . Barefoot Doctor . The Perfect Holistic Antidote to Stress, Depression and Other Unhealthy States of Mind  by Stephen Russell ; Fred & Rose . The Full Story of Fred and Rose West and The Gloucester House of Horrors  by Howard Sounes ; God's Eye View  by Tommy Tenney.
 
     
  London : 7 June 07
DLR through The Future (towards Lewisham) : one man, orange paperback, standing, red sneakers ; two woman, standing, both paperbacks, one reading The Observations  by Jane Harris.

 
     
  London : 6 June 07
Northern line : one man, one woman, both paperbacks.

 
     
  5 June 07
NJ Transit : two women, paperbacks.
N train : two women, paperbacks ; one man, hardcover.
Off to London.

 
     
  4 June 07 : NJ Transit : three women, all paperbacks.
PATH : four women, one paperback, three hardcovers, one of these a Harlan Coben doubledecker, Fade Away  & One False Move.
F train : three women, all paperbacks, one a calculus textbook ; one man, hardcover.
Downtown W train : four women, one paperback, three hardcovers, one seated with a library book of dog stories, another reading Freakonomics ; one man, black hardcover without dust jacket.
NJ Transit  two women, paperbacks.

 
     
  some gaps appear in the log . . .  and may be recreated from manuscript notes  
     
  10 May 07 : NJ Transit : one man, The Way We Live Now  by Anthony Trollope, Penguin paperback (re-sighting) ; two women, paperbacks, one Danielle Steel, and Can You Keep a Secret ? by Sophie Kinsella (pink cover). (Me : Mundane Journeys. Field Guide to Color  by Kate Pocrass, paperback, I had ordered a stack of them and plan to send a few to friends).
W train : three women, all paperbacks, one standing in black raincoat reading Ian Haddam with light blue cover.
Downtown R train : two men, one paperback, one hardcover ; one woamn, Stumbling at Happiness  in paperback.

 
     
  9 May 07 : Amtrak, Philadelphia to Newark : three women, all paperbacks, one J. M. Coetzee ; one man, hardcover. 

 
     
  3 May 07 : N train : two men, one paperback, one hardcover, Investment Management   three women, one library hardcover, two paperbacks, one Janet Evanovich with orange cover, one red and white.  (Me : The Castle of Perseverance. Job Opportunities in Contemporary Poetry  by Thomas M. Disch, paperback).
NJ Transit : one woman, paperback in Russian ; one man, The Way We Live Now  by Anthony Trollope, Penguin paperback. (Me : About the Size of It  by Tom Disch, paperback, after the book publication party).

 
     
  2 May 07 : R train : three men, all paperbacks, one Stephen King.  (Me : Generation Loss  by Elizabeth Hand, hardcover).

 
     
  30 April 07 : W train : six women, all paperback, one late thirties in chestnut leather jacket, standing, Magic for Beginners  by Kelly Link ; six men, one hardcover, The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin (forties, curly hair, leather jacket) ; and five paperbacks, Zodiac  by Robert Graysmith (punk with black hoodie reading "anything" across front), The Fountainhead  by Ayn Rand (sculpted hair thirtyish blue suit with yellow tie), book in Hebrew (religious). (Me : Endless Things  by John Crowley, hardcover).

 
     
  26 April 07 : PATH  three women, all paperbacks ; three men, paperbacks, one Ben-Gurion. Prophet of Fire  by Dan Kurzman.
W train, downtown : five women, all paperbacks ; three men, paperbacks, one . . . for Dummies .
NJ Transit : one man, The Memory Keeper's Daughter  by Kim Edwards, paperback.

 
     
  23 April 07 : De Camp bus : two women, La testa degli Italiani  by Beppe Severgnini, hardcover, and one paperback ; two men, The Road  by Cormac MacCarthy, paperback, and one light green hardcover.

 
     
 

20 April 07 : PATH : four women, all paperbacks, one digital photo manual with yellow highlighter in hand.

 
     
 

18 April 07 : three men, White Teeth  by Zadie Smith, Call Me Your Name  by Andre Aciman, all paperbacks. [TW]

 
  18 April 07 : NJ Transit : three women, Charles Frazier hardcover, The Dog Walker  and Mad Mary Lamb , paperbacks.
PATH : eight women, seven paperbacks, one hardcover ; three men, all paperbacks, High Fidelity  by Nick Hornsby and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations .
F train : three women, two paperbacks, Wife in the Fast Lane  by Karen Quinn and one other, and Shopaholic & Baby , hardcover.
Downtown 49th Street platform, one woman, Shopaholic & Baby , hardcover.

 
     
  17 April 07 : three women, all paperbacks ; two men, one paperback, one hardcover.

 
     
  16 April 07 : NJ Transit bus : two men, one paperback, one red hardcover with stylized quadrifoil on front board ; one woman, paperback.
PATH : two women, one paperback, one hardcover ; one man, hardcover (glossy pictorial boards).
F train : two women, paperbacks.

 
     
  12 April 07 : Uptown R train : four women, one library hardcover and three paperbacks ; two men, paperbacks, Shogun  by James Clavell and one other.
Downtown N train : four young teenage girls in blue soccer(?) uniforms, conversing across the aisle as though the subway car was their own living room. The first said, I was reading my geology textbook and this guy sat next to me, after a while he said, you have to know the names of all these rocks. I just looked at him.
Another said, whenever I read my Hebrew homework on the train, all the Jews of Manhattan gather around me . . .

 
     
  11 April 07 : NJ Transit : two women, paperbacks.
N train : two women, Haunted  by Chuck Palahniuk and The Tenth Circle  by Jodi Picoult, paperback.

 
     
  9 April 07 : NJ Transit : one man, hardcover book in Hebrew (novel ?).

 
     
 

7 April 07 : NJ Transit : one man, The Weight of Numbers  by Simon Ings, paperback ; one woman, Eat, Pray, Love  by Elizabeth Gilbert, paperback.

 
 

6 April 07 : NJ Transit : two women, three men, all paperbacks, one Patrick O'Brian.
Uptown N : two women, paperbacks, one Kafka ; one man, one woman, both hardcovers.
Downtown N : one man, Sharpe's Sword , paperback ; one woman, The One Tree , paperback.

 
     
 

5 April 07 : Downtown W train (walking through five cars) : twelve men, the Library of America Lovecraft  and two other hardcovers ; The Big Sleep  by Raymond Chandler and eight other paperbacks ; nine women, White Cargo  by Stuart Woods, and eight other paperbacks, one hardcover.

 
     
 

4 April 07 : Hoboken PATH train, two men : Patrick O'Brian paperback; and one hardcover (titles unknown) ; two women : Elizabeth George, In Pursuit of a Proper Sinner , paperback ; Chocolat , paperback.
Uptown F train, five women : one hardcover, cream boards, purple cloth spine ; three other hardcovers (one Russian), one paperback ; four men, all paperbacks, one tech manual, one yellow, one black.
NJ Transit : two men, Lenin's Tomb  by David Remnick, library hardcover ; Vagabond  by Bernard Cornwell, paperback.

2 April 07 : Hoboken PATH train, one man, one woman, both paperbacks.
Uptown F platform, Herald Square : silver-haired woman, Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Andrea Kane, paperback ; shaven-headed man in suit, The Green Trap by Ben Bova, library hardcover.
Uptown F train : Jack Higgins, Polish translation, paperback.

 
     
 

30 March 07 : Hoboken PATH train, four women readers : late forties, Chesterfield coat of black and white houndstooth check and red grid, Shopaholic & Baby  by Sophie Kinsella, hardcover ; and three others, paperback (Me : The Library Window  by Margaret Oliphant ).
Uptown F train, four women readers : young woman, The Secret Garden , paperback ; and three others, paperback ; one man, twentyish, paperback.
Downtown N train, crowded, five men : The Selfish Gene  (Japanese edition), paperback ; technical manual, thick paperback ; The Storm of . . .  by George R. R. Martin (partial sighting), paperback ; and two others ; three women : The Inheritance of Loss , paperback, and two others.
NJ Transit : distinguished older man, Six Frigates. The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy  by Ian W. Toll, hardcover. [HW]

 
     
 

29 March 07 : NJ Transit to NYC, white-haired gent on the seat near me, halfway through The Aeneid, Fagles translation (I asked), black hardcover, without dust jacket. (Me : Mundane Journeys. Field Guide to Color ).
Penn Station, NYC, escalator, black-haired gent in dark grey raincoat, Marathon Man  by William Goldman.
Uptown W train, four women readers : Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer , paperback ; Breaking Open the Head. A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism  by Daniel Pinchbeck, paperback ; and two others (paperback) ; one man, skinny book or pamphlet.
Downtown N train, five women readers : twentyish woman with dyed brown and blonde hair, The Twentieth Wife  by Indu Sundaresan, paperback ; young Asian woman, Never Let Me Go  by Kazuo Ishiguro, paperback  thirtyish woman, Dune , (old) paperback ; one man, fortyish, rimless glasses, grape necktie with yellow dots, The Queen's Fool , paperback. [HW]

28 March 07 : 42nd St. uptown 6 station, stiff-looking fortyish guy, belt too tight, long shirt sleeves too short, reading Tuchman's The Guns of August , paperback. (Me : old Penguin paperback of Northanger Abbey ). Routine observation / query : Why do so many middle-aged men, mostly business types, favor fat biographies of statesmen ? [TW]

 
     
 

27 March 2007

 
 

Public Transport Reading Project 07

I had been prepared to abandon the public transport reading project until yesterday evening, when, after a day filled with computer woes (has the hard drive in fact devoured itself ? and other joys) I saw two readers on the downtown R train :  a standing woman intent upon Lone Eagle  by Danielle Steele (mass market paperback) ; and a seated woman reading Valis  by Philip K. Dick (trade paperback).  As my friend TW said, it is the exceptions that will prove the most interesting ; but seeing a book that I would rank as one of PKD's two best (the other being Time out of Joint ) reminded me that there will be other serendipities to encounter.
So once I regained control of my computer, I designed a flyer to print and to hand to people when I ask, What are you reading ?

 
     
 

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Copyright © 2007 Henry Wessells

Produced by Temporary Culture, P.O.B. 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 USA.