5 Books for the Subway.

From the Paris Review:

Can you recommend any books that will make interesting people approach me if I read them on the subway? During A Moveable Feast, people came up and quoted entire passages verbatim, and it really enhanced the reading experience. —Alexandra Petri

The trick is to choose books that have cult followings, and so create a sense of secret fellowship—but that large numbers of your fellow-riders have actually read. That's why it depends somewhat on your subway line. As Philip Roth is to the Seventh Avenue trains, so Jonathan Lethem is to the F. For the Q I might carry either story collection of Edward P. Jones (impress your new friend by pointing out that the two collections are linked, story by story) or anything by Lipsyte or Shteyngart. (Each of whom is also beloved on the L.) On the Lexington Avenue line, The Transit of Venus. For the G train: War and Peace, A Dance to the Music of Time, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2666, Gravity's Rainbow, the complete works of Charles Michener, etc.

Of course, certain writers are good bets anywhere. Thanks to my bike, I have no particular subway, but I will instantly take a friendly interest in anyone I see reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's memoir The Beautiful Struggle, Norman Rush's Mortals, IJ, anything by Adam Phillips, or the essays of Charles Lamb. Possession of these books is sufficient cause for me to ask which part you're at. Maybe for others too. All of which is to say: be careful what you wish for.

I can't imagine reading War and Peace on the subway. The book I've read on the subway, which I've had the highest instance of seeing other people read on the subway is The God Delusion. Mostly because it's hard to miss even in a crowded carriage and I have a feeling that people that read it on the subway are trying to project something about their beliefs to everyone else. The last person I saw on the train reading it had an entire summer's worth of rave bands on his wrists and a Pangea T-Shirt on his back. It's not a very well written or memorable book, but it's definitely one that will start you conversations, for sure.

5 books I have read on the subway I see most often by other people reading on the subway: The God Delusion, The Black Swan (I read fooled by randomness, but the two are really the same book), The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and uh. Stieg Larsson.

5 books I have read on the subway previously that I wish other people I met on the subway were reading too, so I can chat them up on a long and boring train ride:

1. The Bottom Billion (on poverty)
2. The Closing of the Western Mind.
3. The Singularity (it's tech-trash, but fun, and only a certain kind of weirdo would read it).
4. A Dandy in the Underworld (Sex, drugs, Savile Row, a botch up cruxifiction and a great white shark).
5. The Omnivore's Delimma.