What People Are Reading #1 - February 11

For years I have carried a book into a bar, coffee shop, bus, subway, my desk at work. At my childhood bar there was a professor at the University who would sit for hours reading medieval texts in French while the postal workers, truck drivers, real estate brokers, pharmacy clerks, you name it, swirled around him; hours later he would stagger home to his wife, kids, before staggering eventually into his grave.

I’ve thought nothing about it for years. In fact, I had lunch today at a bar with a copy of the Beloit Poetry Journal. Once at Ale & Oysters I was reading American Poetry Review with my lunch, the bartender doing a crossword puzzle. He said, “you seem to know poetry; I need a 4-letter word for a Roman poet, ending with “d”. He was pleased when I solved his puzzle with “Ovid.”

Tonight at The Point over a pizza, a glass of wine, I noticed a young woman reading a slightly banged-up book. I had a vision of a sub-set of Blog entries about what I see people reading & got the courage to ask her.

What Megan was reading was a novel Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown. “It’s an OK read,” she said, “I like to read at the bar;” she said that she got it to take it with her when she traveled recently.