Reading on the train

Today's NY Times published an article about what people read while riding on the subway. You might even recognize one of the people interviewed, though the reporter didn't quite get the reasoning right, or the quote. Maybe she was subtly influenced by those Rosetta Stone ads.

(Update: I guess I was a little too mysterious here. The reason I posted this article is that Bob is quoted in the article because he was studying Rosetta Stone on the subway. The writer imagined that he might be studying Italian in order to go meet a fiance's parents in Tuscany. The truth of the matter is that he didn't want to be the only person in New York City who didn't speak two languages!)

I really liked the journal idea in the article.

I like watching others read on the train. Many people read the free subway paper or a tabloid, play video games, listen to music I can hear too well on their iPods, or compose text messages, but you'd be surprised at the variety. This week I saw a young man trying stand astride and read while balancing Infinite Jest. It would never had worked except that he was somewhere in the middle of the book. I saw a woman with a book that started on the right, mouthing prayers in another language. No head scarf, black hose, black skirt--Hebrew, I think. Another trip to Jamaica Bay yielded a teenager in a beach coverup, absorbed in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter. (A clever psychological tactic, perhaps?) Some older Hispanic women read tracts, in Spanish, of course. Sometimes the books are so esoteric that I'm surprised the reader can concentrate. Lots of people study on their way to class, including a young man who was obviously cramming algebra II on the way to his Regents Exam last June. I've seen teachers grading papers, and C.Z. always gets curious when she notices someone with an orchestral score. (If you peek over someone's shoulder, you are supposed to at least be discreet.) I see lots of Michael Pollan, books about Obama, Eat, Pray, Love, or whatever is popular. When the movies come out, sometimes I see Narnia or Harry Potter.

I didn't read at all on the train until recently, because I had a non-reading child in tow (C.Z. claimed she couldn't concentrate on a crowded train). But during last week's leisurely hour-and-a-half commute to Jamaica Bay, I ploughed through the end of Tarjei Vesaas' The Birds, while C.Z. read the first several chapters of Pride and Prejudice. And a couple of weeks before, a woman asked me if I liked Kristin Lavransdatter. Perhaps a new era has begun.