Apr 24 2006
Subway Reads
I was to stick to the original plan.
Dedicated readers of abrooklynlife will remember the
ill-fated Subway Reads postings, a
brief compendium of the most popular tomes to be found in the hands of
commuting New Yorkers. It was one of my favorite features, even if, however
tragically, one which was to be short-lived. So recently I was given a
proposition: one car, one train, five commutes in underground observation.
In New York we like to believe that we are the nation’s
epicenter because we deserve such distinction. “Look at our museums, our
galleries, our newspapers!” we cry. Our public transit system is justifiably
the best in the world, and on more than one occasion I’ve gloated to my
car-shackled friends about the mornings of solitude aligned with so many
strangers – our noses buried in books, our minds far from the dreary monotony
of screeching iron and jostling crowds.
Compiling each week’s Subway
Reads would be such a simple task. Yet this week I found myself distracted,
even distraught at each successive stop. Was that Kant triumphantly snatching
the last seat? Nora Roberts curled up in the corner? Truman Capote stepping
into the car ahead? My fertile imaginings banged shoulders with the Post on the way to work and got jumped
by a gang of anorexic ipods making the commute home. Each day seemed more
barren than the last. Where were all the books? Is the “subway scholar” a
fiction we’ve created to justify those glorious nights squandered in front of America’s Next Top Model? Do we deserve
our annointed place as the most educated, informed and erudite of the nation?
Or, is the F train just one disjointed thread running through a larger,
greater, more prose-friendly city?
In truth, lots of people read on the subway. They read maps
and newspapers and magazines. They read printouts from class and photocopied
essays. They read the advertisements (“Beautiful, looking skin!”) and
occasionally the poems that lie next to the advertisements. It is true, some
people read books. But from my admittedly small vantage point, the long lists
and careful tallies fled like so many rats skittering away into the recesses of
a rumbling platform.
But this was going to be about books, and through the din of idealism’s death throes, a few sweet notes sounded. Below are this week’s winners, chosen without hash marks or complicated ranking systems. I Paint What I See, Gahan Wilson titled his 1971 collection of drawings. This week I scribbled my visions in the margins of the New York magazine that lay open on my lap.
Angels & Demons
by Dan Brown
Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to
Decode Animal Behavior
by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
Middlesex
by Jeffery Eugenides
Avalon High
by Meg Cabot
Player Haters
by Carl Weber
[All images shamelessly stolen from Amazon.com. Neither the
writer nor abrooklynlife supports the sole use of online retailers. Be a good
neighbor and buy your books local.]
On your lap: Want
to contribute your book-thoughts? Send the best, the worst, the most incredible
book sightings here!
9 Responses to “Subway Reads”
Love the “Beautiful, Looking Skin” ad. Makes me smile and cringe whenever I see it.
Great idea for a series. Keep it up. Really fun. OTBKB.
Is the “subway scholar” a fiction we’ve created to justify those glorious nights squandered in front of America’s Next Top Model?
These things are not mutually exclusive, and (if I lived in a subway state) I would fit the profile of both. I feel these are complementary rather than adversarial tendencies.
Also: I hear Middlesex is okay but not great. Anyone else read it?
yep. i thoroughly enjoyed it. maybe not *the best book ever*, but is that really necessary?
i have to say that its raping/plundering scenes still come so vividly and unbidden into my brain. pretty terrific writing, and not for the faint-hearted.
I love the subway, in good part because I get so much reading done, even more on my busiest days running around. If I’m reading a book I really love, I’ll even find excuses to go Uptown…!
Reading? How very last century. I have given up reading on the subway and am working on my mastery of phone Tetris. Judging from my fellow riders, everyone else is too!
I go the Tetris route too, only because I take 3 trains and switch every 2 stations.
Not to be particular, but under no circumstances is our subway system “the best in the world.” America, sure, the world, not a chance.