Once upon a time, years ago, I sat in a railway waiting room in Nantes, France, reading a life of Henri de la Rochejaquelein as I waited for my train. I was so absorbed in my book, in fact, that it took me a while to notice someone crouched right before me, busy rummaging through one of those large duffel bags. And rummaging. And rummaging. And rummaging…
I did notice in the end, and stole a glance over the book’s rim – and there was this bespectacled boy about my age, pretending fascination with the contents of his bag, and desperately trying to get a peep at what sort of story held my attention so thoroughly.
So I gave him a smile, and tilted the book to show him the cover. Caught in the act, the boy jumped a mile, blushed furiously, grabbed his bag, and fled – but not before stealing a glance at the title, much to the amusement of two of three rows of fellow travelers.And yet, you know, the French boy had no need whatsoever to blush and flee: I am just the same. I cannot see a reader without itching to know. On a train, at the airport, at the vet’s… I just can’t help myself. I turn as nonchalantly as I can, I pretend to retie a boot, I risk dislocating my eyeballs, I blush to interesting hues when I get caught. I do it all the time.
Curiosity? Yes and no. It’s hard to resist the temptation to decipher someone based on what they read… And I know that one single book means little – and even less when traveling. One reads strange things, when traveling: gifts bought for someone else, or the one decent title found at the duty free, or the small volume that fits in the hand-luggage, or a fellow traveler’s loan… Or not. It’s hard to tell, it can mean very little. And yet, we all do it. Or at least, I do – and like to draw conclusions.
Which is why, when I catch someone peeking at my books, I understand it very well, and always tilt the book to show them the cover. Sometimes I do inobtrusively, sometime I exchange a grin with the peeker. After all, we belong to the same tribe, don’t we -just like that boy in France, once upon a time. Those Who Peek At Other People’s Books.
Scribblings 
When I was in high school i started reading in Englsh. I used to buy them in a small bookstore by the Turin station. The shop had a large supply of small, thin white plastic bags, in which my weekly purchases were placed. And going back home afterwards I noticed not only my fellow travelers were peeking at what I was reading… they also tried to read the book titles through the thin white plastic of my bag. The fact that those were books in a foreign language caused them to make a lot of strange faces.
So one day I happened to mention this fact to the owner of the shop – people making faces while trying to make out words in another language through a plastic bag.
He laughed, and asked me to give him back the bag with the books I had just bought. I was a little surprised but I handed him my bag.
He smiled, pulled the books out and slipped them in again.
“We put them in upside down,” he told me. “This way it’s funnier.”
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😀 Oh, this is wicked! I protest most heartily on behalf of the Peekers!
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Here in NYC, we used to have a culture of reading on the subway. Now it’s greatly diminished–everyone has their ears plugged with earphones. But every once in a while, I’ll be sitting with someone standing over me, their one hand on the overhead railing, the other balancing an open book. As they read, blotting out the world around them, I can leisurely observe the front and back covers of the book a few inches from my face.
At the least, I’ve gotten some good book recommendations. At the most, a conversation with a stranger. Those don’t come cheaply on a NYC subway.
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In Italy we are (or at least we have a reputation for being) rather casual about striking up conversations with strangers. I don’t live up to the reputation, though, and only once started chatted up a reader: a young woman with an Italian translation of Conrad’s The Shadow Line. I had heard it had a prefaction from a writer whose choice surprised me very much, for several reasons – so the prefaction is what I asked about. It turned out the reader had a habit of always keeping prefaces and forewords last, and had nothing to tell me on the subject – but we began chatting about Conrad, and reading habits, and my Kindle, and it was a very pleasant leg in an otherwise awful journey.
Perhaps I should do it more often.
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