I Am Probably Snooping on Your Books

And I'm not even a little sorry.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

Hello! How was your summer? We recently got back from a trip to Portland, Maine, a city that’s successfully captured my lobster-and-donut-loving heart. While there, our little trio visited a couple of bookstores and rode a coastal trolley that’s been around for centuries and dipped into the ice-cold bay. During a turbulence-filled plane ride back home (thank u, climate change!), our chatty flight attendant (Southwest, of course) caught sight of Dan’s paperback cover and asked what he was reading (Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions or You). They talked about the book and then she moved on with the drink cart. She doubled back a little later with a notepad, ready to write down the title, so she could pick it up when we landed. (I, on my Kindle, did not present such a ready invitation for bookish conversation and I was very envious to miss out!)

The sweet interaction got me thinking about how books can be such a powerful form of connection, no matter how fleeting. Of course, we readers tend to share thoughts about books with friends and family, but there’s something about spying a familiar book cover in the wild, in the hands of a stranger, that opens a new door for conversation. It’s a surprise and delight to recognize a cover of a book you’ve read or one you want to read. And it’s a great excuse to mentally pile onto your TBR.

In Portland, I couldn’t stop peeking at the books people were reading. Some were the hot picks of summer, like Percival Everett’s James, Catherine Newman’s Sandwich, Kristin Hannah’s The Women, and Abby Jiminez’s Just for the Summer (many appearances from that bright cover in particular!). Other readers, lounging on sunlit benches or waiting for friends at tiny tables tucked into buzzy restaurants, were engrossed in backlist titles I hadn’t thought about in awhile: Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Still more—at the beach, on their porches, in crowded airport terminals—were bent over books I’d never heard of. There are so many books in the world for so many tastes and styles. It’s the coolest!

If a stranger was reading something I’d finished, I’d speculate on which part of the story they were in based on where the spine opened. Sometimes, if it was a twisty book, like Lucy Foley’s The Midnight Feast, I’d get a little thrill thinking of them stumbling across the parts that made me gasp. Other times, if it was a book that made me cry, like M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans, I’d long to be paging through those familiar passages again. I’d vicariously live, for a moment, inside their reading lives. 

If the person were reading a book I hadn’t read, I’d sometimes ask how they were liking it; whether they would recommend it. Usually, people are happy to—briefly—share their thoughts about books. (Readers, I find, are some of the nicest people. I am not at all biased!) Even those small and seemingly insignificant moments are enough to sow the seeds of commonality.

Once, someone on an airplane asked me about the ARC I was reading, and we got to talking about what ARCs were and why I had one (blurbing). Then we discovered that she’d recently picked up a copy of *my* book! It was one of my favorite book-snooping conclusions.

E-readers are wonderfully convenient, but one of the best things about them—their discretion—is also the quality that thwarts conversation. People don’t typically lean over to ask what you’re reading on your Kindle (and they shouldn’t, because, in my case, it’s usually smut). 

I also find myself less liable to linger in public places these days, where such interactions might be possible. Working from home, I don’t encounter many people in the course of a day; fewer, still, who are reading. Once, I used to ride the subway for three hours a day, an endless trickle of stops that let on waves of commuters, many with creased paperbacks in hand. This was the earlyish 2000s, before data was reliable and streaming was efficient, and before e-readers, so we got more access to one another’s reading lives then. (I am, predictably, riveted by a TikTok account dedicated to what people are reading on the subways of New York.)

I miss that knowing feeling of seeing a familiar book cover across the way—like glimpsing a friend in a sea of strangers. That comfort, somehow, endeared me to the person reading too. It was the briefest of antidotes to the loneliness that we all, on various levels, find ourselves battling. Books, the unifying force. The equalizer and bridge.

So let’s pretend we’re in a third space now. Imagine me glancing at you from the next table in a crowded coffee shop or across from your seat on the metro, where you’re cradling your latest book. What would you be reading? Would you recommend it? 

In my corner, pumpkin-flavored-something in hand, you’ll find me turning the last pages of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Jonathan Doerr, a masterful door-stopper that moved me immeasurably and still seizes my imagination at unexpected moments. You and I will chat—briefly!—about books. Then we’ll part ways, soaked in the residual warmth of a friendly, low-lift interaction that makes us forget that we’re all just strangers commuting through a lonely world. 

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If you’d like to read more from me, please take a look at Banyan Moon, my debut novel, and Adam & Evie’s Matchmaking Tour, my debut romance! Thanks for being here.