(or, Būks Ōn Trāyns)

My early visits to libraries seem to have been motivated by noticing that feigning an interest in books excused me from the school playground on a cold/rainy day, rather than a desire to learn anything. Even up to my teens mistreatment of books was rife. We had a craze at school where we made small finger sized skateboards (before fingerboards became commercially available) by melting rulers over Bunsen burners in science class. We’d sit there endlessly tapping our fingers on these miniature skateboards much to the annoyance of our teachers.

During library time we noticed that a similar effect could be achieved by putting a hard backed book over the edge of a table; if we banged on the over-hanging side of the book it would spring up, then with both palms spread out we’d push the book in the general direction we wanted it to go (replicating a skateboard ollie if anyone knows what one is). These weren’t Islāmic books by the way, I didn’t accept Islām until I was 23, so I’m talking here about science books and whatnot. The best (or most challenging) ones for this pastime were the art nouveau books, hard backed and excessively large to accommodate the pictures; having knocked one into the air, and if we were fast enough, we could run across the library landing the book on the other side of the room. Coincidentally I was also thrown out of the school library a number of times as a child.

I eventually grew up and began appreciating the knowledge inside books rather than their physical potential to entertain. There is much in the way of cultural etiquette surrounding book reading, I don’t know to what extent some of what follows may be “British-ness”, but here are some of my experiences.

Living in London much of my life involves being squashed into a busy train travelling to and from work. So a train journey is either spent (when space permits) reading or simply observing fellow travellers. There is an interesting jockeying for position that can be found when a swan-necker (someone who reads a stranger’s book over their shoulder in a kind of a silent duet) comes across a chest-hugger (a determined individual who hugs his book close to his chest lest someone find out what he’s reading).

I think, in general, I’m more inclined to side with the chest-huggers of the world, although this may vary depending upon the book I’m reading. For instance, when I was reading “Mastering Jujitsu” to and from work I did feel self-conscious that I might look like I had “fight me” written on my forehead. And when I bought Jason Burke’s “Al-Qaeda” I decided to read it at home in case I got manhandled from the train for ‘planning something’.

I try to position myself in a space that will give the least possible scope for others to visually drop in on me and my book. But then again I’m rude like that, as I used to travel on long distance bus journeys with my walk-man headphones stuck in my ears with nothing playing, just in case anyone felt like starting up a conversation with me; they’d hopefully be put off assuming I was otherwise engaged.

I’m not alone in being conscious of others seeing what I’m reading. I was told by a friend that he was travelling on a train and someone on the carriage was whizzing through a crossword puzzle in the Times (a highbrow newspaper) but after leaving the carriage and his paper behind, my friend discovered he was actually doing the crossword in the Sun (which could loosely be defined as a newspaper) but had been concealing it inside a copy of the Times.

I got on a train once and sat opposite some guy, he gave me an infuriated look and immediately got out a pen & pad from his bag and feverishly began scribbling notes, intermittently scowling at me. As if to say “you just made ‘The List’ - buddy!” I figured that it was a ‘Free Palestine from Israeli Occupation’ sticker that I still had on my jacket, left over from a recent demonstration, which had provoked his rage. Rather than spending the journey looking at him looking at me, I pulled out a book and started to read. It was on an Islāmic topic, don’t remember what, but it sparked another bout of incensed scribbling.

Then there was the time when I was travelling standing and a lapse in concentration combined with a jolt in the train’s movement caused me to drop my book. My attempt at catching it somehow transformed into batting the book, spine first, into face of the person sitting beneath me, hitting her square on the bridge of her nose. I apologised profusely but felt shy from reading for the remaining journey lest I injure someone else.

I am clearly in a minority in the ‘hows’ of book reading. In all honesty, I do occasionally dog-ear pages and have a dog-ear code that I follow.

I put a dog ear at the top of the page to indicate that there is something interesting near the top; likewise a dog-ear at the bottom will refer me to the page-end. A double dog-ear (see below) means that there is something interesting on both sides of a page, which I find easier than finely slicing the page so that it bends two ways.

I started a poll on the forums to see how alone I am in my dog-earing and my friend cited an objection by a scholar of the past to this practice. I think it depends on what I’m reading whether or not I’ll mark the page in this manner. I wouldn’t dream of dog-earing a mushaf for instance.

I just like leaving indicators reminding me to return to a page at a later date and prefer dog-earing as a technique over fish-finning (where you insert endless post-it notes on pages until it looks like a family of sharks are swimming up the side of your book).

On the whole I am very pro-book/pro-reading but couldn’t help but laugh at Wally from Dilbert who said “I used to read, but it’s faster to make up stuff.”

So, if you ever get on a train and see someone holding their reading material close to their chest, occasionally folding the corners of the pages over and wearing silence emitting headphones then just be wary in case I bat my book in your direction.