This is a few days old, and probably doesn’t really merit reporting as “news” at any rate, but on the Guardian Books blog a little while ago Sarah Crown wrote that the problem with the Kindle is that it makes it impossible to see what the other people on public transportation are reading.

Spying on what everyone else on the bus is reading is my main source of entertainment on the way into work in the morning. Train journeys are enlivened by trying to sneak a look at the cover of the book the person opposite is buried in, without them spotting what I’m doing. One of my favourite internet destinations is the People Reading blog which posts pictures of the denizens of San Francisco, with their latest reading material; a prize, meanwhile, to anyone who can reunite me with a blog I used to visit a few years back written by a woman somewhere in north America, who used to clock not only the title but the page of books bypassers were reading, nip into the nearest bookshop, track down book and page and transcribe what she found there.

I’ve covered this very point before, and I imagine other TeleRead writers have as well. I’m a bit ambivalent about it. On the one hand, yes, there’s no God-given right to be able to tell what other people around you are reading. On the other, it does kind of bring you closer to the people around you to know what books they are enjoying.

And, of course, it provides free marketing for the publishing industry for their books to be seen in public—which is something they’ll lose with e-books, unless and until someone makes a two-faced tablet that can display the book cover on the back.

But things change. And just because it’s “the way things have always been done” is not sufficient reason to cling to the past. Perhaps the people who used to enjoy passively spying on their fellow passengers can instead work up the nerve to strike up a conversation: “Pardon me, but could I ask what you’re reading?” The worst they can say is “No.”

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TeleRead Editor Chris Meadows has been writing for us--except for a brief interruption--since 2006. Son of two librarians, he has worked on a third-party help line for Best Buy and holds degrees in computer science and communications. He clearly personifies TeleRead's motto: "For geeks who love books--and book-lovers who love gadgets." Chris lives in Indianapolis and is active in the gamer community.

5 COMMENTS

  1. “On the other, it does kind of bring you closer to the people around you to know what books they are enjoying.” Right! It brings you closer to total strangers to be able to spy on them. What is so hard to understand about privacy, even the minimum amount that’s possible in such situations, or the fact that it’s nobody’s damned business what other people are reading? At least Sarah Crown outed herself as a snoop who lacks respect for others.

  2. I was just knocked out by this: “Spying on what everyone else on the bus is reading is my main source of entertainment on the way into work in the morning.” What? To me, it is totally bizarre that she would not be reading her own book. I do not understand how she can be that wrapped up in what others are reading that she reads nothing herself while en route. Reading is one of the perks of public transportation. I’m retired now but when I was working, I avidly looked forward to the half hour each way where I could totally immerse myself.

  3. Sounds like a use case for a new social networking app. The app “sees” the covers of books being read w/i WiFi range and enables the snooper to just lurk or try to contact the reader asking, “How do you like so far?

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