frumiousb

It seems a lot of you folks out there in the Sunday Salon are able to keep your reading a relatively private ritual. You curl up with a book on a Sunday, and spend a sleepy day with cat and tea.

I'm a little bit different. Since I travel so much for work, reading is a largely public affair for me. Most of my books are consumed in trains, planes, automobiles, and buses. I read them in hotel breakfast rooms. I keep them tucked in my laptop bag.

I'm not going to go so far as to claim that this somehow makes reading into a dialogue with the unknown public. However, I probably find much more than others that certain books seem to provoke a reaction.

It's unpredictable, really. I might have expected Uncle Tom's Cabin or Blood and Guts in High School to spark a conversation. But instead, eyes passed over the title and out the window. Some books get a reaction from the aficionado only. Janet Frame, for instance, is really good for smoking out kiwis on a train. I remember that I once had a conversation about The Tunnel (William Gass) with an Israeli PhD student who found it very difficult to believe that a businessperson read such things. (& I probably confirmed his worst fears in the process, since I found the book both pompous and grotty)

Certain books, however, get very strong and occasionally quite odd reactions. I will recommend to other ladies that reading Gödel, Escher, Bach on an airplane is to become as a man magnet to any male computer genius who may be in the vicinity. I still receive the occasional email from a University researcher who confessed to me with great longing that he didn't know that there were women who read books like Gödel, Escher, Bach.

I'm currently reading Wealth of Nations, and it is too early in this big book for me to have very much to say about the text itself. But I will say that it is already evident that it provokes some very strong reactions in people who see me reading.

"Why are you reading that?" snapped a Dutch businessman on the train.
"Are you studying economics?" asked the Danish business administration professor.
"Excuse me, why are you reading that?" asked a curious student.

Others restrict themselves to staring, but do so with clear surprise.

To all and sundry I give my very humble explanation-- Wealth of Nations is one of those books that everyone discusses, but seems to hardly ever be read. I had read large sections of it in college, and had decided to circle back and pick up the text itself.

This explanation helps somewhat, but only somewhat. The Dutch businessman informed me icily that there were very good summaries available, and it was perfectly unnecessary to read the original text. The professor looked ashamed and said that he should really do the same thing. The student just shrugged, seemingly unconvinced about my sanity.

So do you have any experiences with public reading? What's the best conversation that you ever got started from reading a book? Any books in your experience draw a strong reaction from other people?