Spying on what others are reading
Steal a sideways glance on the bus. Peep across the table on a train. Peer over your own book in the work canteen. Squint through sunglasses by the pool. Spy slyly as you pass a park bench. Gaze while idling in the café queue. Just don’t get caught.
To discern what others are reading is, to some of us, impulsive. A benevolent force pulls our eyes into contact with someone else’s book cover. There are certainly shades of innate literary nosiness to this, a need to snoop through the curtains. You pass judgement, too, and even feel that a stranger’s choice offers an insight into their character. There will be unknown books and familiar ones. Such paperbacks in common may prompt warm thoughts of kindred spirits, perhaps even a desire to cry out, ‘I’ve read that!’, but of course you never do. Book kinship between strangers is a silent, unspoken bond. Whatever the title, there is a muffled unity between readers.
While this can often be a passing delight, in the poolside version or while occupying the tram seat behind your subject, your interest is sustained. An unintended, casual voyeurism allows you to observe how exactly others read. Their speed, progression and concentration, and the objects they employ as bookmarks make for a slow-burning, intermittent study of our species’ behaviour. The way in which we read is seldom discussed; espionage like this offers tentative answers, hopefully not restraining orders.
Dearest of all are the recurring readers strafed across our routines: the middle-aged man with his spy novels on the 42 bus; at work the Polish cleaner reading more English classics than the English ever will; the split-shift waitress and her long afternoons with a detective series on a tartan blanket in the park. Such people are frequent characters in your daily stories, the choice of their next book a narrative in itself about them and about the surroundings you share. Somewhere now, the book spies and their subjects are becoming the story. Eyes mistakenly meet just above the spine, but instead of a scowl, the faintest of smiles is returned . . .