I read in public all the time. Specifically, I read whenever I am in a restaurant by myself. A lot of times I think people don’t care what other people are doing. A lot of the time I don’t know that they can tell what I’m doing because I’m usually reading on my phone or iPad. But the worst is when well-meaning happy perple come up to me and say,
What are you reading?
UGH! There are reasons that this is awful.
- Talking to humans is awkward
- I’m probably reading something strange and, not to sound all hipster here, but they probably aren’t going to have heard of it. Then we stand looking at each other while I try to summarize it poorly and end up talking about werewolves in public and they are regretting starting this conversation.
Is it just me? Am I just particularly awkward at book conversations in real life? Why am like that? It isn’t like I don’t have practice. I’ve been doing this on the interwebs since before most of my questioners have been alive but can’t do it IRL.
I did have a cute interaction a few weeks ago though. There was a young waitress at a Mexican restaurant. She got all excited when she realized I was reading. She didn’t speak a lot of English and I didn’t want to make the awkward conversation even worse in my Spanish but we muddled through. She proudly told me that she had read 5 books in January. I gave her appropriate kudos. She got even more excited that I appreciated her. Then she questioned my genre preferences and I feel like I chose correctly when I answered fantasy because she yelled, “ME TOO!!!”
I guess conversations like that with people who actually like reading make up for strained ones with people who are only trying to be polite.
