Big Brother Book Club: Book Snob Edition

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We saw greatness this week. A mom reading one of these Superman & Wonder Woman books, personalized and starring your child, out loud to her son during morning rush hour. Atlas Shrugged and House of Cards next to each other on the F train (which doesn’t even go to Wall Street). And on our way into the bagel shop the other day, we spotted “A Small Good Thing” on a page over a shoulder, and awkwardly circled around the table to see which Raymond Carver collection was in the reader’s hands — Cathedral . Much like last week’s Kindle dude, it took us a great deal of self-control not to sit down and regale him with our knowledge and love of Carver. And look at this new edition! So much prettier than the old ones, with drawings of people with vague faces and a blocky font that felt unforgivably ’80s.

More of our favorite books popping up in public after the jump. The Virgin Suicides and The Year of Magical Thinking were welcome breaks from the sea of indistinguishable Ludlums and Pattersons and Baldaccis we see so often. Exit Ghost , eh, we’re not totally sold on Roth, but he beats the hell out of waiting for the new Dan Brown.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (and the straight-outta-grad-school conversation going on above it) reminded us of a party we went to once — on the way out the door, a stranger spotted a copy of Has Modernism Failed? next to the pile of coats and, with much laughter, asked “Who’s reading THAT?” Um, our date.

Also seen: The Alchemist (is Coehlo really that good? Maybe we just don’t like fables); Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom ; I, Mona Lisa with a Norwalk Library stamp, and Terry Goodkinds Stone of Tears , which until just now when we looked it up, we thought was State of Tears, and a historical novel about the displacement of Native Americans. Oops.