Posted Thursday February 11th 2010
by Nikesh Shukla

Commuting in London is fraught and over-crowded and boring at the best of times. It’s also the place where I get 90% of my reading done. It heartens me to see people reading a variety of materials from books to magazines to miscellaneous things on e-readers. Occasionally I see someone watching a film or TV episode on their iPod and feel a bit sad, thinking ‘Read! Now’s the perfect time!’

Recently, I’ve had two very separate reading-related encounters on trains that I thought were worth writing about for their bizarreness.

One

I was standing on the train, reading Gemma Weekes’ debut novel Love Me, when at Euston, suddenly masses of people piled on. They pushed and shoved, trying desperately to move millimetres further into the carriage. There was nowhere to go. Pressing into me was an annoyed woman in her thirties, grimacing at being squashed in the busiest hour of the busiest day on the busiest network of trains in the country. I was in the middle of a tense section of the book and wanted to keep reading. I lifted the book close to my face, so close that my glasses were redundant and I carried on reading. This exchange followed:

‘Excuse me, can you get your book out of my face please?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your book. It’s too close to my face.’

‘It’s nowhere near your face.’

‘It is. It’s all I can see. I don’t like the cover, can you read it at some other time?’

‘I’m sorry but it’s not in your face and I wish to read my way through this uncomfortable journey.’

‘Look, sometimes, you just have to get on with it...’

I’m ashamed to say, I defied her and carried on reading, albeit with the pages practically brushing my nose in a new arena of closeness, so close that I could no longer decipher the text anymore. My commute is long and crowded and the only time I get to escape is when I’m reading. I was surprised that the cover of the book had offended so much that she didn’t want to look at it. I wondered why she hadn’t brought her own tube-entertainment.

Two

I do always survey what everyone in the carriage is reading, in case I’ve read it or want to read it and want to survey reactions; or just for the sheer nosiness of it. So imagine my surprise when a week after the first incident, I was reading Submarine by Joe Dunthorne and looked up to see that someone near me was also reading it. What a great surprise. We were both pushed against a door, straining our eyes over the words, and we were reading the same book! Now, this may not seem like so strange an event, but if it had been one of the Twilight books or something by Cormac McCarthy, it would have been less surprising. But it was Submarine, a young book by a young author released last year. Psychically, the other Submarine-captain looked up at the same time and we smiled and gestured to our books. He appeared to be further into it than me. He held it up and said,

‘Don’t worry- I won’t give you any spoilers.’

I laughed. Passengers’ heads turned to the interaction, taking place in a noisy yet voiceless carriage.

He continued: ‘We’re the sanest people in this carriage.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘We’re allowing ourselves to escape.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Also, it’s not strange that we’re strangers talking about the book we’re both reading, yet everyone else in here thinks it’s strange we’re both strangers talking about the book we’re both reading.’

‘You enjoying it?’

‘Fantastic. Makes me forget I’m actually stuck in this overcrowded carriage.’

‘Me too.’

I continued reading with a massive smile on my face wondering why the rest of my tube journeys aren’t this delightful. I’m half-tempted to set up a Victoria Line commuting book group.