July 29th, 2010
Books in Motion #6
Everybody was reading novels at around 5:00, as our subway train sped westbound on the Bloor-Danforth Line. I spotted a man reading Oryx and Crake, one reading something by Patrick O’ Brien, and another with his face buried in After Dark by Haruki Murakami (from the Toronto Public Library). Plenty of others reading books I couldn’t see the covers of, and then the woman reading a gorgeous vintage copy of The End of the Affair. (The edition pictured here is not the same, but it’s the closest in hue that I could locate). She looked about forty, perfectly pretty in an ordinary sense, wearing glasses, and shoulder-length curly hair. She was traveling with a man beside her who was stuck in a book too, but I couldn’t see the front of his. Neither was talking to the other. They were laden with two enormous suitcases, and a few other bags. I speculated that perhaps they were en-route to the airport? A trip-out, I assumed, because their luggage had no YYZ tags, but the woman was about two thirds into her novel. And how curious, I thought, to take a half-finished book on holiday with you. I would never, ever do such a thing. Most of it already used up then, and she’ll just have to cart it with her for the rest of her journey…
May 12th, 2010
Books in Motion #5
Spotted westbound on the Bloor-Danforth line (as I was on my way to the first meeting of my brand new book club, The Vicious Circle [which is setting up to be the best book club ever]), a white male approximately forty years old. Hairline slightly receding, drinking a can of Pepsi, wearing a thick gold wedding band. His handsome-enough appearance juxtaposed with flood pants, black socks, bad running shoes and a windbreaker. He was reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest, on-loan from the Toronto Public Library.
March 31st, 2010
Books in Motion #4
A book in motion for every leg of last night’s journey to the meeting at Literature for Life. The almost-not-awkward, soon-to-be-handsome young man riding east on the Bloor-Danforth line. He’s reading David Adams Richards’ Mercy Among the Children. The young woman in fabulous boots getting off the southbound train at Yonge Station carrying The Bell Jar. And then the man beside me reading The New Yorker eastbound on the Dundas streetcar. Which isn’t a book in motion, I realize, but the streetcar was crowded and everyone was being terribly private about whatever novels they were reading.
March 1st, 2010
Books in Motion #3
Today was a small girl wearing rainboots and riding a scooter that zipped past me on the sidewalk, a hardcover tucked in her brightly coloured basket. I caught up with her at the corner and inquired about the book she was transporting. And it turned out that this was not just any little girl, but a kind of strange one who is irresistible to adults but probably has trouble making friends her own age, and for four blocks she talked to me about the Lemony Snickett series, and how there are thirteen of them, and if I haven’t read them yet, I should. They’re about children whose parents die, and they have a guardian who only wants them for their fortune (and she pronounced “tune” in “fortune” like a song, and she kept saying it over and over.) Though I promised to read them, I probably won’t, but all the same, the little girl was the most delightful person I have encountered ever, like a character out of a book herself.
January 20th, 2010
Books in Motion #2
Today was a girl in her twenties, carrying a shoulder bag with a picture of a golden retriever puppy on it, racing across Bloor Street on foot and then heading south on Robert Street. Didn’t even stop to talk, and all the while she had her nose stuck in a copy of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne as if her life depended on it, and maybe it did.
December 18th, 2009
Books in Motion #1
I’ve long maintained that contrary to all signs of doom, people are reading all the time and everywhere. And now, in the tradition of the late, great Seen Reading, I want to drive that point home with a record of good books I see being read out and about. These are signs of hope, you see, these books in use. And today was the middle aged woman in the subway, white with brown hair, wearing a bulky winter coat (and weren’t we all?) reading a battered copy of Who Do You Think You Are? So there. Now doesn’t that make you feel better?
