Reading on Trains

I was able to discuss at length today one of my favourite, 'making the most of the time available topics,' drum roll, Reading on the train.

I have a friend whose life support rucksack to work contains, 'my book and if I've nearly finished it, my next book.' My life support ruck sack contains also sun glasses, an umbrella (for this is England,) head ache pills, cold curing magic sachets and a whole pile of other stuff, often bits of music that need to be sung, played, conducted or analysed.

Anyway, we were having one of those days when you have to talk to your form individually and do targets 'n' stuff. One boy produced 'Jane Eyre' from his bag as he tried to convince me it is 700 pages long, 'not unless it's a large print version,' I thought, or it's got bonus tracks since I read it. We also discussed standing on public transport and reading, what to read, when to read, reading for pleasure and reading 'cos you have to.

He's not the only one trying to read improving books and good for him. I decided that rather than make excuses and never get round to 'War and Peace,' this was the year. Jan 16th and I'm on page 70 and the print is much smaller than 'Jane Eyre.' I promised to show him just how small the words are next week. Why it's so long, it's two books, which I think I bought 20 years ago as a student. Shame on me....

I first started commuting the Autumn after the present Pope was elected and I read his chatty books. You know, the ones that are basically book length interviews as well as his memoirs. Since then, I've lasped into a certain amount of free sheet reading which is such a waste of their paper and my time, as well as snoozing and generally vacantly looking out of the window, which in the pitch dark is pretty uninspiring. I spend 5 hours on trains a week.