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Also this issue: Industry Standard Tabloid Sensation Hanging in the Balance Telling the Truth Twists of Fate Highway to Art Weathering the Storm Art of the Deal |
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May 29-June 4, 2003
art
 Fast read: Trips on public transportation make for great reading opportunities, which Center City District hopes will boost membership in its Transit Book Club. Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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Local commuters (re)discover the pleasures of reading in transit.
"One should always have something sensational to read on the train." Oscar Wilde was referring to one’s diary, but these surprisingly literary billboards have been turning up in PATCO stations to advertise the Read and Ride Transit Book Club, a new and fine idea cooked up by Michelle Shannon at the Center City District to promote both public literacy and public transportation -- two of my favorite things.
Back in the 1920s, people were so nuts about crossword puzzles that the B&O Railroad put dictionaries on their trains. Shortly thereafter, everybody started to drive, making reading or doing crossword puzzles impossible. By now the benefits of mass transit should be apparent to everybody -- not just that it provides a chance to read, although that's no small thing -- but don't get me started on the evils of the oil industry or pollution, or city congestion, or the conversion of the fender-bender to fatal accident by the proliferation of SUVs and Hummers.
The Transit Book Club is an experimental project -- the first in the country -- to encourage both the taking of public transportation and reading thereon. Imagine the fun of sitting down on a SEPTA bus or PATCO train, as I do nearly daily, and finding that the person next to you is reading the same book you are. Instant conversation -- or instant way to retreat from conversation, by going back to your book.
Here's how it works: Every month, two paperbacks -- one fiction and one non-fiction -- will be chosen as the Transit Book Club's featured books. There is no cost to join the TBC -- just sign up at one of the 14 participating Barnes & Noble bookstores in Philadelphia and New Jersey, or at www.readandrideclub.com. In addition to Barnes & Noble's 20-percent discount on the selected books, the club will provide newsletters with reviews of the books, announcements of author appearances at local bookstores and arrange discussion groups.
May's books are the novel The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian and The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman -- the memoir Roman Polanski found so moving that he made it into an Oscar-winning film. It's about a Polish pianist who survived WWII, his life saved by a German officer who had heard his last radio broadcast of Chopin. The Buffalo Soldier is about an African-American foster child taken in by a white Vermont family grieving for their daughters lost in a flood. Bohjalian, whose previous novels are Trans-Sister Radio, The Law of Similars and Midwives, will be speaking about his new novel on May 30 at three Barnes & Noble stores: the Marlton and Moorestown branches in New Jersey, and the Center City store at 18th and Walnut.
The experiment will have a six-month trial -- if it’s successful, it will continue. Judging by the first two weeks (as of this writing) 300 people had signed up and sales of both books had jumped significantly. Onward to June’s books -- the titles will be kept as a surprise each month until the last minute. But I persuaded Marilyn Page, director of community relations at Barnes & Noble, to spill the beans; June’s titles are (fanfare, please, not to mention a little traveling music): Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (fiction) and The Pact by Sampson Davis et al. (non-fiction).
Chris Bohjalian will read and sign at these Barnes & Noble stores, Fri., May 30: 12:30 p.m., 200 W. Route 70, Marlton, N.J., 856-596-7058; 6 p.m., 18th and Walnut sts., 215-665-0716; 8 p.m., 1311 Nixon Dr., Moorestown, N.J., 856-608-1622.
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