Leaving Books on the Subway

Poetry in motion

When I left Ohio I also left most of the books I’d managed to accumulate in the six short years I’d lived in that last apartment.

And yet my current home is filled with books.

How does this happen? Do they follow me home? Do they sneak in during the night and settle happily onto my shelves, squirming to make room for themselves? Are people leaving books behind when they come to visit? Perhaps they just materialize out of thin air.

Books are mysterious that way.

I can’t throw books away. I won’t. I have trouble even leaving them out on the stoop because face it, not that many of my neighbors read books. Not throwing shade, just making an observation based on 18 years living here. So what on earth am I to do with all these books?

I have a kinda sorta solution but it only works with certain books. It works splendidly with books I’ve enjoyed but know I won’t be reading again. For example, when I finished “Devil in the White City” I simply left it behind on the subway. Ok, yes, that’s technically littering. But there’s also a chance that someone found that book and took it home. Then that person laments how books seem to proliferate without rhyme or reason on his bookshelves, but now that’s his problem.

Over the years, I’ve gotten quite clever and original with where I deposit books I’ve read and know I won’t read again. Or the odd book I just give up on. There’s always that.

I’ve been known to simply hand them over to the street book vendors who set up card tables and boxes near NYU. They shrug and take them. I’ve also left books behind in restaurants, delis, taxis, and, yes, in bookstores (don’t look at me that way; it wasn’t Barnes & Bloody Noble or anything….although now that I think about it that might be fun).

I even left a copy of Hilary Mantel’s massive doorstop of a book, “A Place of Greater Safety” (which bored the bejesus out of me) in the dressing room of a Bolton’s clothing store. Even though I really enjoyed “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies”, they also got left behind somewhere.

I consider it a public service. This is a world that badly needs more readers and having books simply floating about where anyone can happen upon one could be the catalyst to create a reader. Or not. Most of the books I entrust to the gentle considerations of future readers wind up left behind on buses or on the subway. Mostly because that’s where I do a lot of my reading and where I happen to find myself when I hit that last page.

My solution wouldn’t work so well in small towns for a couple of reasons. One: no subways. Two: someone is going to see you walk away without your book and rush to return it to you. It’s also not a great solution in a car culture because leaving a book on someone’s hood in a parking lot could be misconstrued. No need for a bomb scare just to reclaim an extra inch and a half of real estate on the bookshelf, right?

As I begin to ponder publishing my own books and sending them out into the greater world to find their fate, I wonder how long it will be before I come across one left behind on the Q train by someone who either didn’t like it or just knew that they weren’t going to read it again?

Or maybe my readers will keep and cherish their copies (signed, of course)!

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