The Secrets of a Well-Worn Book (Globe and Mail)
Submitted by Julie Wilson on December 21, 2010 - 12:18pm
This essay originally appeared January 14, 2009 at the Globe and Mail.
I'm a literary voyeur. I watch people reading: on the subway, on the streetcar, in cafes. And I post the sightings on my website, Seen Reading . I've been described as the “Gossip Girl of the book world,” a moniker I don't mind in the least.
We're social creatures, after all. We don't live in a time, yet, where our homes are voice-activated to produce “Tea, hot,” like an episode of Star Trek. Even if we don't care for company outside of friends and family, we venture into public spaces, going through the motions of shared community, if not for pleasure then necessity. I go to the market because I need food. I go to the pharmacy because I need toiletries. I go to my local pub because I don't have the upper body strength to change a keg of Guinness.
And to get to work, I take transit. In Toronto, transit riders are decidedly introverted. Courtesy aside – removing my knapsack so you can pass, standing up so you can sit, wearing fitted earphones so you don't have to share my taste in music – fellow passengers enter into an unspoken agreement that it's not rude to sit silently, making no conversation, gesturing only in the rare instant that you're sitting on my jacket, or I'm standing on your purse strap.