Reading as a Public Display of Affection

I looked around the bus on my way to the Park-N-Ride today and noticed that about half the riders were reading, a fourth were plugged into audio, and another fourth were napping or resting their eyes. Most of the people reading were reading novels. They say people aren't reading books anymore. Have you been in a bookstore today? They are full of people. Amazon.com and other web shopping connections make it easy to get a book.

In the places where I live my life, like the bus, people are reading. I said to the woman beside me, "we should start an RTA rider book exchange." She laughed, but she thought there was some truth in what I suggested. Think about it—we could have space on the bus, maybe in the rack on top, where people put their used books and can choose the next one they’ll read. It would be completely on the honor system. We could leave notes in the books, things like, "I really liked the comic relief Falstaff provided," or "Harry Potter seems younger than 17 in this book in the series" or "do you think there really is a 'secret'?" The questions would cause us pause, get us to think.

My friend Sheryl, who's living in South Korea right now, describes book salons where people go to read and discuss books. Bookstores are places where people go to read and discuss books, a ready-made book discussion group. Those bookstores also offer foot massages, as if there's a mind-body connection between having someone's thumb pressing on the arch of the foot and how well the words are ingested.

Those of us who love to read have stand-out memories of reading, like my memory of a summer reading Little Women while sitting in the crick of a crabapple tree. Others... reading light fiction on a wide beach in North Carolina, sipping tea while reading Moby Dick in a hammock, or sitting by a fire with a glass of whiskey and reading poetry by Robert Frost aloud.

People are reading everywhere I go. They have those memories that make them love it, just like I do. When I walk through the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in the morning, people sit and read while they drink their coffee. Tables in The Arcade or the BP Atrium are occupied by readers eating a bagel for breakfast or a brownbag lunch. Strolling across the Mall downtown, I find readers sunning themselves while sitting on the poured-cement benches on Mall B or the iron-worked benches on Mall A, even while people play Frisbee on the grass or the spray of the fountain flicks across the pages of the book.

Summer's all but disappeared now, and the festivals and boat rides and Sunday mornings on the beach are nearly behind us. The mornings are getting cool enough now that sitting on the deck requires a jacket. The evening walks are getting earlier and earlier as the sun sets closer to 7 than 8:30. But summer can be suspended by finding a place outside to read on those really beautiful fall lunchtimes and afternoons.

There are some great public green spaces in downtown Cleveland: the Mall A or B benches, the little garden in front of the Penton Building, Willard Park, the Triangle on Playhouse Square, the patio at the Galleria, Chester Commons near Reserve Square, and Voinovich Park down near the water. Make it a good beach book or a challenging Faulkner treatise or a Bronte romance or humorous Kurt Vonnegut.

My favorite reading space is the Eastman Reading Garden. This gated city garden, sandwiched between the historic 1925 building and the Louis Stokes Wing completed in 1997, is the best place to sit and read. When the sculptured metal and bronze gates at the north and south entrances of the Eastman Reading Garden are open, we’re welcome to sit on the benches or in the comfortable wire chairs, in the shade or in the dappled sun. Nothing evokes quiet repose like the tree-filled sanctuary in the city gentled by the soothing sound of flowing water.

Sculptor Maya Lin created the sculpture called Reading a Garden, which features an L-shaped granite fountain with water smooth as glass flowing down the sides. But the fountain is only the focal point; Reading a Garden is the garden setting of mixed media interspersed throughout the garden. To enjoy it, one must slow down and leave the workday behind. One must become one with the garden while reading.

The space has grown up into a private oasis, a place to hide out. And that's what books do for us -- allow us to escape into our own private place. Even on a bus.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia J. Taller ctallerwritesATwowway.com
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