Wow. How weird is this?
Imagine going home to Brooklyn Heights, or catching the G train at Clinton-Washington, or waiting in the subway station near Times Square, or on the long bus ride up to visit the Cloisters. You are quietly minding your own business.
You attract the stares of a nearby, shleppy fellow traveler with slightly crazy eyes. Is it a pickpocket? A mugger? A masher?
It’s not you he’s after. It’s your book.
Here’s how the website CoverSpy explains itself: “A team of publishing nerds hits the subways, streets, parks & bars to find out what New Yorkers are reading now.
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Yesterday, a teacher in her thirties was going over her lesson plans at the Housing Works bookstore. She’s reading the Tobias Wolff collection (left). The moment immortalized on the worldwide web!
Today, a 20-something woman wearing ear-pad headphones at the Carroll Street station reads about Marilyn Monroe (right). Captured!
It goes on and on — and the Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/CoverSpy, if you absolutely must know the latest in what other people are reading right now, now, now. Kind of like watching other people eating, innit?
Thanks, Andrew Herkovic, for this tip. Whew! Who knew 21st century life would get so strange, so fast?
Tags: Tobias Wolff