If you’re like me, it’s impossible to pass someone reading without determining what it is they’ve got open on their lap. I don’t think I’m alone. Recently, at the NBCC finalist announcement in San Francisco, over breakfast at my hotel, I watched as a gentleman literally walked a circle around my book (Ben Ratliff’s book on Coltrane), so that he could read its title, then paused to read the flap copy (!), all this while I waited behind him to reclaim my seat. I tried to be a little more discrete on the train from Boston today, and this is what I noticed:
1. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. The American South
4. The Tipping Point
5. The Irresponsible Self: Laughter and the Novel