WORD UNDER THE STREET

You know when you see a stranger on the subway immersed in a book and you’re just dying to know what they’re reading? Geoffrey Vendeville asked

Julie Thompson, 25, ecologist

Book: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Stop: York Mills

Thompson has been gravitating toward 20th-century Russian writers lately. Earlier, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, now We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The anti-Utopian novel is said to be a prototype for George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Written in 1920, it was passed around in the Soviet Union as a manuscript but was only published 68 years later. “It’s very interesting how the (main) character’s perspective is transitioning from being very for the state to moving toward, ‘maybe everything’s all messed up,’ ” Thompson says.

Angela Chan, 26, student

Book: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling)

Stop: St. Clair

J.K. Rowling chose to write crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith to prevent her books from being compared to Harry Potter. But if you look closely, there are clues in The Silkworm that suggest it’s by the same author. “It’s similar in that she has the same warmth that she treats all the characters with,” Chan says. Detective Cormoran Strike, a six-foot-three former Royal Military Police investigator, focuses on solving the disappearance of Owen Quine, a washed-up novelist with many enemies. When the writer turns up dead, Strike looks for possible suspects in the pages of Quine’s unpublished manuscript.

Andrew Gunpath, 33, classical musician

Book: Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Stop: Davisville

Even master satirists such as P.G. Wodehouse pale in comparison to Pratchett, in Gunpath’s opinion. “Pratchett is one of the wittiest authors I’ve ever read,” he says. “He’s not on the nose with his satire like Wodehouse, but when he decides to be he’s even funnier.” There is something about the recurring character Sam Vimes, the quintessential crusty policeman, that has led Gunpath to read Pratchett’s Discworld series over and over again. Vimes, a hard-drinking captain of the city watch, takes after Clint Eastwood’s character in Dirty Harry, Gunpath says. In short, “he’s the guy who’s too old for this sh-t.”

Prashant Sinha, 40s, works in banking

Book: At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

Stop: Queen

Miss Marple goes on holiday in London at the Bertram Hotel, but soon gets to work solving a string of robberies. The setting is based on Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair, a fivestar establishment which is said to have been a favourite of Christie’s. Sinha says he took to Christie’s novels while in high school. He likes her Hercule Poirot the best of all her detectives. Would he ever wax and curl his moustache like Poirot’s? “I would if I could,” Sinha said.