So I forgot to post my Subway Sighting of last week, and to make up for it, I’m going to bombard you with the book titles I’ve spied over the past two weeks. This is my highly unscientific experiment to determine if the good people of Gotham—at least those who ride and L and R trains—have a preference between fiction and nonfiction.

Fiction wins in this match-up, with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Kinky Friedman’s The Mile High Club, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (Bk. 1), and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness contributing to its victory. This doesn’t surprise me considering how much New Yorkers are assaulted with incarnations of “fact” via newspapers, subway ads, billboards, and street hustlers. Sometimes, a person just wants to go to a different (quieter?) place. 

Yet nonfiction’s no slouch either. Check Edward Luce’s In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever, and Brian W. Jones’s The Emperor Domitian, which give credence to the oft-repeated idea that New Yorkers are an informed, cerebral bunch all too eager to debate sport and politics.

Of course, you could read into these sightings for the length of the A train (the longest at 31 miles), and that’s what’s so fun. Books make me think, even when I’m only glancing at their covers.