NANDINI NAYAR
 May05 Enid
Blyton II
Apr05 Enid
Blyton I
PENI GRIFFIN
Mar05 Last
Column
Feb05 What's
In Your Notebook?
Jan05 Read
A Little Louder
Nov/Dec04 Creativity
IV
Oct04 Creativity
III
Sep04 Creativity
II
Aug04 Creativity
Jun/Jul04 Social
Angst and All That
May04 Reading
In Public
Apr04 Elephant
In The Living-Room
Mar04 Literary
Synchronicity
Feb04 The
Most Important Thing in the World
Jan04
Year-End Wrap-Ups
Dec03 Editors...
They Ain't Want You Want, They're What You Need
Nov03 The
Secret Formula for Originality - Revealed!
Oct03 An
Incoherent Message Concerning Narrative Structure; or 'Reality. What a
concept.'
Sep03 Preaching
to the Choir
Aug03 FanFic
on ACHUKACHAT, the website discussion board...
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Reading In Public
by Peni Griffin
Reading can happen anywhere. On the bus. On the elevator. While eating. While watching TV (which I admit can be tricky). In, and on the way to, the restroom. A friend of mine reads in his deer blind. My husband and I took books to a concert to help us survive the line around the block and the inevitable wait with the canned music turned up too loud for conversation. The day someone in the security hierarchy of the airlines realizes what an effective weapon a backpack full of books could be is the day I stop flying.
If you carry a book, you carry privacy. The drunk man who (according to the tourist couple who fetched a ranger) deliberately flashed me from across the Riverwalk must have been annoyed that I never looked up. Yet I don't miss pleasant things. My peripheral vision always suffices to alert me when an egret swoops by.
Few enough other people have this salubrious habit that I always pay attention when I see someone else reading outside the usual venue of home/library. I've noticed that, whereas I always take whatever book I happen to be in the middle of, other people seem to have special types of public literature.
Religious works are big for reading on the bus, especially religious works in Spanish, and I'm not talking about The Watchtower, either. People read Bibles, advice and self-help manuals, books of daily devotions, and what look to my agnostic eyes like solid, serious hardback theological works. Textbooks are also popular, especially on the buses that take me past Fox Tech High School or in the vicinity of San Antonio College. I class both religious and textbook readers as self-improvement mavens, not pleasure readers. They're putting their daily commute time to good use, and more power to them.
Big thick novels of the bestseller variety are next most common. Sometimes these are in Spanish and I can't tell precisely what they are, though a swooning woman in the arms of a pirate against a blazing sky is a good clue. You see more of these on airplanes than on buses - the "airplane book" is almost a sub-genre of adult fiction, a thick tome heavy on action and light on character, something to lift you out of the discomfort of a seat designed for anorexics and distract you from the fact that you'd be safer facing backwards. These books are also deployed during solitary lunches. A big book in public says: "I'm prepared for the long haul." When I spot a thin book, it is almost always science fiction, and I'm willing to bet the reader has a couple more in his backpack. Science fiction readers have a low tolerance for boredom and long ago outgrew any need to pretend to be too cool to need amusement. A thin book in public says: "I like reading."
A mysterious thin-book phenomenon occurs in the break room of my office building. I don't eat there if I can help it - even if the adjacent "smoke-proof room" really were, why would I eat inside when the beautiful San Antonio River is a mere 15 stories down? - but sometimes, even in San Antonio, it just gets too cold and on those occasions I crank the window open a bit to let fresh air in and consume lunch and my book in the space provided. In the corner by the microwave someone maintains a book-and-magazine supply. The books are almost all "romances" of the sort that bleed gently over into the category of "pornography." The magazines are primarily Jane, Maxim, and various computer publications. I never see anyone reading them (but then I eat at 11:00 and most people eat at noon), but their only possible purpose would seem to be for the convenience of people who find themselves alone in the break room without having provided themselves with reading matter. The implication is that someone who reads these sorts of books is prepared for an emergency; or that the building management regards this material as good for morale. Either way, it's a public service, but I don't like to ask building management about it because building management assumes that if you mention something, you're complaining about it. The reading matter isn't to my taste, but I'm not about to spoil it for anyone else.
Magazines, alas, are awkward to carry around. Hardly anyone publishes in digest form anymore, and slick magazines require either constant use of two hands, or folding. This is not convenient. I think many people reserve magazines for bathroom reading, to which general interest magazines are indeed peculiarly suited. In many houses, a magazine bin is located under the toilet paper roll.
All the same, magazines constitute the most conspicuous form of public reading. Medical waiting rooms are universally stocked with outdated and eclectic collections of magazines which people read in an attempt to ignore the pain of whatever asinine program is running on the poorly-tuned TV hanging on the wall. If the hospital waiting room is the common model of reading in public, I don't wonder that it's not more popular. Only a waiting room is duller than two-year-old ephemera, and it's luck of the draw whether the doctor stocks anything you're remotely interested in. Yet, it would be so simple to solve this problem by bringing your own material! If, by setting the example, I inspire people to carry books to doctor's offices, I will not have read in vain.
Discouragingly, I hardly ever see children reading in public, but then I hardly ever see children alone in public, either, and we are all more likely to read when alone in the crowd. More parents should bring books to read aloud to their youngsters, as my sister did for my niece when we traveled to Iowa for my Gramma's memorial service. At the service, I noticed a girl I didn't recognize (a distant cousin? The daughter of a well-wisher, dragged to a service for a stranger?) reading in the foyer of the sanctuary. I didn't recognize the book itself but it looked like a YA novel. I hope nobody got on her case. Gramma wouldn't have minded.
I would like to take this opportunity to debunk some myths about reading in public, all of which are believed by people in my office building. For instance:
1. If you read on the stairs, you'll break your neck.
Nonsense! The only time I ever tripped on those stairs, I had no book. Most of my walking injuries are twisted ankles sustained when I'm walking, bookless, on a flat sidewalk and a bird flashes by. Coincidence? I think not! Reading improves my stair-climbing, walking ability.
2. You'll run into somebody if you read while walking.
I never have. Most readers have excellent peripheral vision. Also, most people who see someone reading and walking automatically make way for them, thus reducing the chance of a collision for a reader to well below the chance of collision for a non-reader. Practice good judgement (reading and walking in a crowd is not advisable) and you'll be fine.
3. A book must be very good to justify reading it in public.
But look at the options! How bad would a book have to be to be less interesting than the average ride in the average elevator?
4. People who are reading in public are desperate for an adult to talk to.
The rare occasions on which I am not reading never prompt conversations, but the book seems to send some sort of signal - as if the only reason these people can imagine for having a book is as a conversational opener. Never ask anyone "What are you reading?" However, if (like the person who saw me with Valerie Hobbs's Tender the other day), you see someone reading a book you enjoyed, be sure to catch their eye when they look up and say: "That's a good book!" before returning to your own carried literature. Public readers need your moral support!
5. People who are reading in public are annoyed by juvenile attention.
Parents always seem to assume that their children are nuisances, unless they actually are. Obviously, this is a tricky topic. However, any child who shows an interest in what I am reading is a child I'm disposed to like. For one thing, they generally show it by attempting to read over my shoulder, a non-invasive procedure. Why parents will stop their kids from reading and permit them endlessly to kick the seat in front of them is a mystery to me.
Like any public activity, public reading has responsibilities. It is incumbent on me not to hold inappropriate material in such a way as to be readily viewable by adjacent children, and I hope that any parent who realizes that I am inadvertently exposing their child to scene-of-crime photos of Ripper victims will speak up. I would never read while crossing the street and seldom read while walking down a sidewalk, this being so much more potentially dangerous than an office hallway. My hunting friend observes all proper gun safety procedures while reading. When my sister read to my niece on the airplane, she did so quietly, aware that the insistent rhythms of Dr. Seuss might not appeal to our temporary neighbors as much as they did to us. Whatever was in that book the girl was reading at Gramma's memorial service, she read it quietly, with a sober face.
This is all part of the normal public human dance, easy enough if you pay attention; at which public readers excel. If we didn't, we'd be constantly missing our bus stops. Public readers set a good example of a salubrious habit. So next time as you perform your leaving-the-house ritual, checking for bus pass/car keys, wallet, and house keys, add a check. Are you carrying a book?
If not, why not?
See you in the elevator!
May 2004 © Peni Griffin
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