Caught in the Act of Reading

I don't know if there's any act more passive than watching other people read books. But I spent a chunk of my Sunday afternoon immersed in Sonya Worthy's blog, People Reading (in San Francisco).

It's a blog about books -- books pictured in the hands of literate citizens throughout San Francisco. Each image is accompanied by a few details about that reader's preferences: recently read, favorites, next book.

Worthy wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle you may have seen back in January. She talked about traversing the country on Greyhound to photograph literary life across the United States.

I've resisted believing what the NEA said in 2004 -- that less than half of the U.S. population is reading literature. But then, I look at what I call my two-thirds collection -- the books I manage to stick with for two thirds before moving on to the next two-thirds book. There might be something to the current article in Atlantic Monthly -- Is Google Making Us Stupid? Writer Nicholas Carr discusses how new habits of scanning web text might even alter our malleable brain circuitry.

Bringing that back to People Reading -- what kept me reading (about people reading) was the defiantly analog presence of books in San Francisco scenes that might normally include more iPods than paperbacks. The recent closure of Cody's inspired me to dig out a few volumes I'd bought at the old Telegraph Avenue store, remembering where I was when I bookmarked the various pages. I love technology (to borrow from Napoleon Dynamite). But I can't say I have the same sentimental attachment to my Firefox bookmarks.

A somewhat related note: The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur is okay, in spite of the raging wildfires in Big Sur.

• People Reading - by Sonya Worthy
• Book Crossing - global book-sharing network
• Independent Booksellers in San Francisco