Carrying the right book on Muni
This is my favorite book - too grim for the bus?
This is a true story: a single guy friend was sitting on the bus when he spotted two attractive women sitting across from him, both carrying the same book. He decided to strike up a conversation with them by asking them why they had the same book. They told him that they were in a book club and had just bought this book together at a book store for their next meeting. They told him all about the books they’ve read and what this particular book was about, and, well, digits may have been exchanged.
Well, what book was it, I asked him.
“It was The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Juno Diaz,” he said.
Did it matter what book it was?
“Of course! I mean, if it were Eat, Pray, Love, I don’t think I could even talk to them!”
I actually know another guy friend who tries to carry an impressive or interesting book on BART so that, “just in case,” he can strike up a conversation with the right girl. He leaves the programming book in his backpack for the BART ride and busts out his more literary reads.
I too love books so I can sympathize, though I would hate to think that some random person is looking at my book choice in barely concealed disgust!
What do you read on the bus? Have you started a conversation with someone based on their choice of books? And what’s the book you’d be too embarrassed to carry around? (come on, who loves the Chicken Soup for the ______ Soul series?)
I once saw an African-American gentleman reading “Stuff White People Like.”
I took a class in the bible as literature at SF state for a semester, which along with a lingering procrastination habit necessitated that I read a bible on Muni. Not a little pocket bible, either, a pretty substantial NIV edition which weighed roughly 100 pounds and had those shiny gilt edges that apparently call out the book as more precious than any other book, or something.
Number of cute girls I met while reading the bible on the bus: 0. This is despite my attempts to appear wholesome and yet with a raffish, secular humanist air about me. I suppose I should just be glad that I didn’t get any rants from militant atheists about how I was BRAINWASHED into worshipping an INVISIBLE SKY SUPERHERO, blah blah blah…
I will say that girls reading Tolstoy are instantly 5 times more attractive to me (I think this is similar to how some girls I know feel about dudes carrying guitars). At the same time I don’t want to break in while someone’s reading one of the towering works of literary achievement in order to make small talk about the weather, so I’m not sure whether a good book makes an efficacious flirting device.
(PS: nice to meet you guys at the mixer thing…)
Ebook readers are handy if you like to read things that you don’t want to be seen in public.
I would also feel bad about interrupting someone who is reading.
Considering I’ve been reading Wuthering Heights on the bus all week, you probably don’t want my advice about this.
You might attract some quality ladies with Wuthering Heights, you never know!
This makes me a little sad that reading on buses makes me so motion-sick I’d likely barf on anyone interested in what I was reading. I used to read on BART sometimes, but now that I need reading glasses I almost never do because it’s a hassle to put glasses AND book away by the time I get to my stop. c
I use a book cover for this reason. 1) It helps me cover my shame in reading Harry Potter while avoiding other people’s comments and/or judgments. 2) The lack of disturbance helps me get more reading time on BART. Anna Karenina is taking enough time as is! 3) It also helps protect the book for when I reach my stop and have to shove the book into my bag. I get a monthly newsletter that’s printed on decently heavy stock. I have a stack of them for reusing for different sizes of books–as they wear out, just grab a fresh one and it’s reasonably easy enough to fold the cover on the book in a not-too crowded bus.
I’m also a motion-sickness girl, but I have to admit that I try to carry the “right” book on public transit. My current one (when I don’t forget it) is Atlas Shrugged, and before that, I proudly brandished a number of David Sedaris books.
But I do judge people for reading self-help in very (very) public situations like that. I personally think such books are for one’s alone time, at home or in a park somewhere. Or maybe I should just stop looking at what other people are reading.
Atlas Shrugged? *Shrug*
OH DEAR GOD, no not Atlas Shrugged. Cloud Atlas. Atlas Shrugged is a terrible book and should not be read by anyone, in any setting!
I finally had to ban my best (male) friend from dating girls who read The Lovely Bones or Eat, Pray, Love on public transit. The books are harbingers of seriously passive-aggressive potential girlfriends.