How many of you have ridden on a tube, a bus, a train or a plain and enjoyed reading a nice novel, a mystery thriller, quirky magazine or simply a newspaper? Pretty much everybody, I assume. How many of you had that weird feeling of someone reading it with you over your shoulder? I would say everybody has experienced it at least once...
Don't we just hate it?!
I was thinking about it the other day. I was observing people on the tube reading some stuff. After realizing someone was picking over their shoulders, many passengers seemed quiet annoyed about it. Some rolled their eyes, others closed their books, some positioned their paperbacks so that “naughty” people sitting next to them could not properly see anymore, and others moved places. I started wondering whether I was acting the same way when someone was trying to read what I was reading...
So today, on a tube, I carried out an experiment. I was pretending to read James Patterson’s novel 7th Heaven and secretly paid attention to those around me. It did not take long before I realized a man sitting on my left was reading the book with me. And, to be honest, I got a little bit annoyed about it... He had his own book so why did he have the desire to look at mine? Was it more interesting? Was it more attention-grabbing? Was it so extraordinary that he just could not keep his eyes off of it?
After thinking about it for a while, I came up with a theory that had nothing to do with any of the above. I simply think people do not even realize they do it. I do not think they consciously want to pick over someone's shoulder in order to annoy them. I think it is a reflex action... It is such involuntary and spontaneous automatic behaviour that people cannot control it. This is the way I see it.
I do not really understand why we get so annoyed by it in the first place... Those who read our books would not steal the letters from them... They would not vaporize from a newspaper... Words written on each and every one of the pages of a newspaper will still be there... answer to a silly question in ELLE Magazine will still be present on exactly the same page even if someone reads it with us... a murder case will still be solved in the last chapter of a psychological thriller even if someone picks over our shoulder and reads it too... So why do we hate it so much? Is it because it is OUR book, OUR newspaper, OUR magazine and nobody has the right to look at it and to invade our privacy?
I do not know... All I know is that every time a have a feeling of someone reading my book over my shoulder, I simply want to look at that person and say “Do you mind?”
Anyway... I have found this Subway Etiquette: The Art Of Reading Over Someone’s Shoulder. You can access it here.
I do not really understand why we get so annoyed by it in the first place... Those who read our books would not steal the letters from them... They would not vaporize from a newspaper... Words written on each and every one of the pages of a newspaper will still be there... answer to a silly question in ELLE Magazine will still be present on exactly the same page even if someone reads it with us... a murder case will still be solved in the last chapter of a psychological thriller even if someone picks over our shoulder and reads it too... So why do we hate it so much? Is it because it is OUR book, OUR newspaper, OUR magazine and nobody has the right to look at it and to invade our privacy?
I do not know... All I know is that every time a have a feeling of someone reading my book over my shoulder, I simply want to look at that person and say “Do you mind?”
Anyway... I have found this Subway Etiquette: The Art Of Reading Over Someone’s Shoulder. You can access it here.
Quite handy, I must say :)
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