Writer Kia Abdullah had the idea for this post, which is something we may lose in the e-book era: seeing what strangers are reading and possibly striking up a conversation.
Kia writes:
…So I saw a person reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides on the train and I just had to talk to them about the book (something I’ve never done before). If you haven’t done something like this already, it might make a good You Tell Me (i.e. what book would make you talk to a stranger). I don’t think it’s always necessarily your favourite book, but one that you may have read recently or that is largely unread by your circle of friends and acquaintances.
Is there a book you’re so passionate about that you’d strike up a conversation with someone you saw reading it?
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts or We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Or if they were reading a copy of my novel Dead Frog on the Porch! ;-j
I was shopping at Big Lots one day and saw someone looking at Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning. I pulled my cart over and said something like "That one is so great, it's not like her others, I mean, her others are great too, but that one is so much sharper and edgier. It's really, really good." (I might have blathered on a little more.) She put it in her cart and said, "Hmm. Well, it's probably worth the $3." Then we studiously avoided one another in the aisles for half an hour.