Monday, October 3, 2011

Bookspotting: Week 36


This might be one of my favorite pictures that I have taken in Hong Kong. I just happened to walk by at the perfect time on a cloudy Saturday afternoon to catch this artist painting a market street. I never know what I'll see when I explore this strange city, and I love the surprises. The angle isn't perfect and I don't know anything about the painter, but this strikes me as a special Hong Kong moment.

This week I saw a man in a coffee shop reading Lance Armstrong's It's Not About the Bike. A younger man in the same shop was reading The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok and a woman was reading something in English on a 3rd generation Kindle. I spotted a man flipping through The Leisurely Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong by Pete Spurrier. This morning on the train the woman next to me was reading a little black book in Chinese that reminded me of a pocket Bible. I spotted three other Chinese readers this week and one comic book reader.

It's your turn. What are people reading in public places around your town?

In other news, here's the link to an article I wrote for ExpatArrivals.com, a site that is chock full of resources for people moving all over the globe. I wrote about things to see and do in Hong Kong.

5 comments:

  1. I love bookspotting. Thanks for sharing your spottings :-)

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  2. I've been in Ho Chi Minh city this week and spotted almost no locals reading,so I asked our guide; he says book reading is an activity only for students, no one else reads, there is no public library system and very few bookshops. Yet the literacy rate is 91%. The universities and schools have libraries but only for study materials. The Party requires everyone to be literate but only enough to be able to read what it wants people to read, apparently.Newspapers were plentiful but content is state controlled. There are poets,historians and songwriters and their work is popular.Fiction seems thin on the ground. So I only spotted Westerners in the hotel reading: Ken Follet, George Martin (so popular), John Grisham.

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  3. Thank you Willa!

    Joyce, that sounds fascinating. When I first came to HK I felt like very few people read (unless it's a textbook). It's so interesting to discover how reading is viewed in different parts of the world. I hope you had a great trip!

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  4. I love the photo of the man painting!

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  5. The picture it's really cool 'cause I love painting and I think that this is the best one of the best arts of all.

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