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 for you
Andrew McConnell, late 20s, grad student
Book: Distributive Justice and Inequality edited by W. Gaertner and P.K. Pattanaik
Stop: Queen’s Park As other riders paged through spy thrillers and fantasy novels, McConnell was deep into a collection of essays with opaque titles like “Lorenz Curves for Various Processes: A Pluralistic Approach to Equity.”
As you might expect, Distributive Justice is not a page-turner. “It’s very dry,” he says.
“It’s always the same with academic writing. They (the authors) mostly frame it in such a precise manner that it loses any flow. However, the ideas are still stimulating.”
Rashid Katsina, early 30s, works for the city Book: Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson Stop: St. Clair West Before Katsina was interrupted by a Star reporter, he was immersed in a world where slaves, who had helped a king, were drafted into his army and learning to fly. Katsina rates Oathbringer even higher than Game of Thrones. Sanderson, a former missionary who majored in biochemistry before switching to English, says good fantasy-writing requires more than a gripping plot and interesting characters. “The core of writing great fantasy as opposed to other fiction,” he says on his website, “is to get down to the idea of the sense of wonder.”
Harold Danilkewich, 50, engineer Book: Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda Stop: Glencairn Danilkewich borrowed three books from his condo library for a business trip to Santiago, Chile.
One was Gowda’s debut novel, the story of a poor Indian woman who puts her daughter up for adoption. A white American woman and her Indian husband take the girl in.
As she grows up, she longs to know why her parents abandoned her.
Danilkewich says the story wasn’t for him. “It’s a bit too emotional for me,” he says. “I’d rather lose myself in a murder mystery.”
Tonia Relkov, 35, college instructor Book: A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor Stop: Eglinton West Like the writer of the Star’s subway book reviews, Relkov lived with the guilt of having bought this book only to let it gather dust on her shelf for years. She says it’s perfect for commuting because each chapter is a distinct story, the history of an object that provides insight into an era.
If Relkov were to pick an object to describe the present day, she thinks it would be a microchip or fibre optic cable.
“I don’t like that that’s where my mind immediately went because I’m kind of a Luddite,” she says.