San Francisco: Salon Online, 2010.
"On the 2 train uptown during the morning commute the other day, I was in my usual state of sleepwalk -- face crammed into a fellow passenger's armpit -- when a young woman standing 3 feet away from me removed an Amazon Kindle from her oversize designer purse and began to read. A surprising wave of disgust overcame me as I stared at the smooth metallic back of the thing, at her manicured fingernails positioned against it, at her face as she read ... whatever it was that she was reading.
That was part of it, I realized, trying to analyze my own ridiculous, knee-jerk judgment of this stranger. I couldn't see what she was reading, and it bothered me. I couldn't peer in that tiny window onto someone's interior world, or delight in the juxtaposition that a book choice sometimes presents -- when you notice a stuffy, 90-something grandma buried in a trashy romance novel, or a would-be gangsta engrossed in "Love in the Time of Cholera."
