One book for all New York to read? 'Fuhgeddaboudit'

Jostling for elbow room in a jam-packed subway car may seem a strange way to get wrapped up in a good book.

Yet thousands do it every day here in Manhattan, the place where reading has somehow always been more than just curling up at home. Whether immersed in the din of the subway or the public solitude of the library's famous reading room, many New Yorkers consider books a kind of birthright, and their city the place that caters to a host of eclectic tastes.

So when a committee of civic groups recently convened to find a single book for all New Yorkers to read - following a national trend in which whole cities try to become Oprah-like reading groups - many found the effort foreign to New York's unique literary ethos.

"It's almost like a contradiction of the whole project," says Bob Contant, co-owner of St. Mark's Bookshop, an independent store in the East Village. "There's such a cultural mix here in New York, that there is no way that there's going to be one book that answers that definition."

After all, New York's the city where hordes of lonely writers come from around the world - not to mention all the editors and publishers that package and peddle their thoughts. And whether it's reality or just myth or cliché, many New York readers see themselves as trendsetters, ahead-of-the-curve critics who find the good books first.

"Those of us who live in New York think of ourselves as more eager readers than anywhere else in the world," says Paul Elie, a writer and editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, a publishing house in Greenwich Village. "I don't think that's necessarily true, but that's the way a lot of New Yorkers think of themselves."

Even former Colorado Rep. Patricia Schroeder, who's now president of the New York-based Association of American Publishers (AAP), notices a particular passion for books here.

"Everybody wants to compare themselves to the literate level of New York, because everyone feels that people are better read here," she says. "And just from walking around, you just see people reading on the subways, on buses, people on the street - it's almost as if people don't leave home without one."

Reading a book might be one of the most private experiences for a New Yorker - a sought-out solitude in a city where millions of people are literally packed together most of the time. On the subways, more people clutch books than newspapers or magazines as they sway, shoulder to shoulder, on the clacking trains.

But whether it's pulp or polemic, high-brow or trash, the tastes of New Yorkers can be as unpredictable and various as the people who live here. During rush hour on a recent afternoon, a middle-aged woman, dressed in a fur-collared jacket and purple fish-net stockings, sat reading "Rolling Nowhere," a book about America's hobo culture. Across from her stood a young black man, his cap backwards, thumbing through "The Death of the West," Patrick Buchanan's book on the perils of immigration.

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