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
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.
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.
PATH ; two women, one hardcover, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, one paperback, Vanity Fair by Thackeray (re-sighting) ; one man, paperback.
W train (downtown) ; one woman, paperback, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.
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.
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]
PATH : five women, 2 paperbacks, three hardcovers (one Vanity Fair by Thackeray ; one man, paperback Sacred Contract .
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.
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.
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.
Northern line : one man, one woman, both paperbacks.
NJ Transit : two women, paperbacks.
N train : two women, paperbacks ; one man, hardcover.
Off to London.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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]
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.
PATH : two women, one paperback, one hardcover ; one man, hardcover (glossy pictorial boards).
F train : two women, paperbacks.
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 . . .
N train : two women, Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk and The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult, paperback.
7 April 07 : NJ Transit : one man, The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings, paperback ; one woman, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, paperback.
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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.
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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]
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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 ?
electronym : wessells
at aol dot com
Copyright © 2007 Henry Wessells
Produced by Temporary
Culture, P.O.B. 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 USA.