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
Serena Fitchett, 16, student Book: Love Her Wild: Poems by Atticus Stop: Union Is there a more hackneyed subject in poetry than love? Nevertheless Fitchett says this book stands out. Atticus, a west coast Canadian poet who wears a mask at readings, has amassed more than 400,000 followers on Instagram. He also has the distinction of being named the “world’s most tattoo-able” poet by Galore magazine.
Fitchett, who was reading on the subway, sandwiched between friends, says Atticus depicts love in a “more realistic way” — though that should probably be taken with a grain of salt since he describes falling in love in Paris and sipping whiskey in the desert while watching the sunrise.
Ryan Oliver, 29, carpenter Book: The Dark Tower by Stephen King Stop: Queen’s Park “The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”
After reading the first sentence of King’s epic series The Dark Tower, Oliver couldn’t put the books down. “There’s something hook, line and sinker about those few words that has really kept me pushing,” he says. “It leaves you with so many questions.” Thousands of words and hours later, Oliver the carpenter is still chipping away at the books, seeking answers. “I have to see if Roland gets to the tower and what happens to the Man in Black.”
Jackie Sheehy, works in banking Book: Memories of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon Stop: College Sheldon, the late playwright and TV writer turned novelist, was quoted as saying his books imitate the style of the “old Saturday afternoon serial.” “I try to write my books so the reader can’t put them down,” he told The Associated Press. So far it has had the desired effect on Sheehy. As soon as she got on the subway, she felt the urge to pick up where she left off in Memo
ries of Midnight. The sequel to The Other Side of Midnight, it tells the story of a woman suffering from amnesia who is trying to recover her memory while someone is out to get her. “It makes you want to go through all of this with her and figure out if she will find out who she is in time to escape death,” Sheehy says.
Leonard Shen, 40, videographer Book: The Pretender: My Life Undercover for the FBI by Marc Ruskin Stop: College
In the course of his career working for the feds, Ruskin sometimes juggled as many as three personas at once.
He passed himself off as an international jewel thief to gather evidence against a member of the Genovese crime family. He also apparently played a French intelligence agent to ferret out a rogue weapons consultant who was trying to off-load rods to enrich uranium. “These are real-life stories you don’t see on TV,” says Shen. Since he retired from the FBI in 2012, Ruskin spends his time partly as a criminal lawyer in New York.