A New Book

I've recently begun to read again. I'd stopped reading for pleasure while I was going to school part-time, which ended in May 2006. After graduation I took a break from reading entirely. It wasn't until last spring, when I joined a book group, that I started reading again.

I'm enjoying it immensely. I've rediscovered the library and now get all my books from the branch two blocks from my office. I've torn through Blindness, Never Let Me Go, What's That Pig Outdoors, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, Wicked, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I've also started keeping a list of books to read. Each time I near the end of a book, I go online to the library's Web site and reserve the next book on my list.

Well, last Friday I found myself in the library, returning The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife, and discovered that my hold on the last book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, had been improperly processed and I was suddenly bookless. I pulled out my BlackBerry, opened my list of books and asked the librarian if they had The Historian. "By Kostova?" came the reply. I nodded.

All this to lead up to my bus ride this morning. My first bus was deliciously chilly, the air conditioning beating back the hot, humid air, turning the bus into a meat locker. Alas, the second bus had more in common with a locker room than a meat locker. I grabbed a seat near the front of the bus, where it tends to be cooler, and started reading. I'm about 70 pages into the book and it has yet to capture me. I'm not sure if it's the subject material, the way the narrative is constructed or the fact that I'm a little daunted by the length (642 pages), but I was having a hard time blocking out the sounds of those around me.

Making matters worse, two men were talking loudly in the seat next to me. The louder of the two men had a French accent AND was discussing recruiting. The former difficult to block out as it is a unique sound in these parts (accents from almost any other part of the world are common, but not French); the latter as it is a topic in which I am oft times interested. I spent the entire bus ride unsuccessfully attempting to focus on my book.

Don't people understand the rules? Commuters don't talk. It's part of our code. We sit quietly. We listen to iPods. We read. We sleep. But we don't talk. Especially in the morning. Tourists talk. And we all know how they annoy everyone. Maybe I should draw up a code of conduct and make all the regular commuters sign it. Then we can all commute in peace. And I can get on with my book.