It was a wildly colorful Maxfield Parrish kind of sunset tonight, all smoldering oranges and smoky fuchsia spreading behind steely dark clouds. But the young man, smartly dressed in greys and blacks, wearing a beret didn’t seem to notice as he walked along the beach road. He was reading! Not on a Kindle or Ipad. He held a hardcover book in his hands and strode along oblivious to the cars passing and the sun setting extravagantly over his shoulder. Whoever his is, he gets a prize! Reading a book in public!
A few weeks back, a young man in an uptown subway was spotted reading Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. It was all I could do to stop myself intruding on his privacy. I wondered what prompted him to choose this fine novel. Later on the LIRR, a woman was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Great choice in, this, it’s 50th anniversary year. Hats off to HarperCollins for throwing a nationwide celebration of the book. We hosted novelist Hilma Wolitzer at the shop this summer to speak about the book’s influence on her and other writers’ work. And tonight, Kathryn spoke about Mockingbird at the East End Arts Council in Riverhead. The talk was a highlight of their current show “Scenes from a Book” on view through October 8. Photographers were asked to depict a particular scene from any book ever written.
We’ll keep our eyes open for more people reading books in public places. What book would you like to be spotted reading?
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